by Ellen Wood
On the Monday afternoon, when the three young ladies were in the western drawing-room together, the Baron entered, and addressing Adeline, formally requested her to grant him the honour of a few minutes’ conversation.
A strange rising in the throat; a dread, that caused her frame to quiver; a terrified, imploring, but unavailing look at Rose and Mary; and the door closed on them, and Adeline and her acknowledged lover were left alone.
She need not have feared. The Baron did not say a word to her that he might not have said to her mother. But he produced from his pocket the engagement-ring, which had been taken to Paris to be made smaller — it was a plain circlet of gold — and requested she would grant him the honour of allowing him to replace it on her finger.
Without a word of remonstrance — for what could she say? — and sick at heart, Adeline held out her hand; and the Baron ventured ceremoniously to touch it, while he slipped on the ring: in the very act and deed of doing which, the door opened, and into the room strode Mr. St. John, twirling in his hand a French marigold.
He saw them standing together, Adeline’s hand stretched out, and meeting both of his; and he looked black as night. It has been said, in this book or another, that Frederick St. John was of quick temperament: on rare occasions he gave way to violent explosions of passion. It is probable that an outburst would have come then; but the Baron, with a polite bow to Adeline, quitted the room. And Mr. St. John, though certain as man could well be that he had no cause for jealousy, gave way to the irritation of his hasty spirit.
“So, Mademoiselle de Castella,” he broke forth, “you have been enjoying a stolen interview with your lover! I must beg your pardon for having unintentionally interrupted it.”
She turned deprecatingly to him; she did not speak, or defend herself from the charge; but the look of anguish on her countenance was so keen, the glance at himself so full of pure, truthful love, that the gentleman’s better nature revolted at the temper he had shown, and he caught her to his heart.
“But they were cruel words,” she sobbed; “and just now I have enough to bear.”
“Let this be my peace-offering, my darling,” he said, placing in her hand the French marigold.
St. John had long ago heard the tale of the French marigold, and Miss Rose Darling’s sombre forebodings touching himself. He had been assiduously cultivating the flower in the garden at the Lodge, and this, that he now gave to Adeline, was the first which had appeared. —
“This ring, Adeline,” he said, drawing it from her finger. “He placed it there, I suppose?”
“You saw him doing so,” she answered.
He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, and then drew out his watch.
“Give me back the ring, Frederick.”
“No, Adeline. It shall never encircle your finger again.”
“But what am I to say if its absence is noticed? He said mamma had given him permission to replace it. She will be sure to ask where it is.”
“Say anything. That it fell off — or wear a glove until evening. I will then tell you what to do. I cannot stay longer now.”
When Mary Carr was dressed for the evening ball, she went into Adeline’s room. Louise was putting the finishing strokes to her young lady’s toilette, and very satisfactory they were, when Madame de Castella entered, holding in her hand a small circular case.
“Look here, Adeline,” she said, opening it and displaying a costly bracelet, one of beauty and finish so rare, that all eyes were riveted on it. Exquisitely wrought, fine gold links, in the different crossings of which were inserted brilliants of the purest water, with pendant chains flashing with brilliants and gold.
“Oh, mamma!” was the enraptured exclamation. “What a lovely bracelet!”
“It is indeed, Adeline. It is yours.”
“Ciel!” ejaculated Louise, lifting her hands.
“Mamma, how can I thank you!” she exclaimed, taking the jewels.
“You need not thank me at all, Adeline. It is the Baron’s present. Make your acknowledgments to him.”
Had the bracelet been a serpent, Adeline could not have dropped it quicker, and, but for Mary Carr, it would have fallen to the ground. Madame de Castella thought it was an accident.
“Don’t be careless, child. Put it on. You must wear it to-night.”
“Oh no, no, mamma!” she returned, her cheek flushing, “Not to-night.”
“What nonsense!” exclaimed her mother; “you are as shy as a young child. When the Baron presented it to me for you, he said, ‘Un petit cadeau pour ce soir.’ Clasp it on, Louise.”
“Mamma,” she implored, a great deal more energetically than Madame de Castella thought the case could demand, “do not oblige me to appear in this bracelet to-night,”
“Adeline, I insist on its being worn. Persons who know you less well than we do, would suspect that affectation, more than delicacy, induced your refusal to wear a gift from one who will soon be your husband.”
“Not my husband yet,” faltered Adeline. “Not until next year.”
“Indeed he will, Adeline,” said Madame de Castella. “Before we go to the South.”
Her colour came and went painfully. She sat down, gasping out rather than speaking, the words that issued from her white lips.
“We go to the South in two months!’
“Dear child,” laughed Madame de Castella, “don’t look so scared. There’s no reason for it: a wedding is quite an everyday affair, I can assure you. This week I write to order your trousseau.”
Louise fastened the bracelet on Adeline’s arm, and she went down to the reception-rooms as one in a dream. If the younger guests, as they gazed on her excessive beauty, could but have read the bitter despair at her heart, the strife and struggle within, they would have envied her less. A single string of pearls was entwined with her hair, and she wore a pearl necklace; no other ornament, save this conspicuous bracelet of de la Chasse’s. But in the bosom of her low white dress, almost hidden by its trimmings of lace, was enshrined St. John’s French marigold.
The guests had nearly all arrived, and Adeline had done her best towards greeting them, when in passing in the direction of the colonnade, the Baron came up to her. She was longing for a breath of the evening air — as if that would cool the brow’s inward fever!”
“Permit me to exchange this flower with the one you have there, mademoiselle,” he said, holding out a white camellia of rare beauty. And, with a light, respectful touch, he removed the French marigold from the folds of the lace.
Did de la Chasse suspect who had been the donor of that cherished French marigold? Did he remember seeing it in St. John’s hand that same afternoon? It is impossible to tell; but he seemed more urgent over this trifling matter than a Frenchman in general allows himself to be.
“Sir, you forget yourself!” exclaimed Adeline, angry to excitement. “Return me my flower.”
“It is unsuitable, mademoiselle,” he rejoined, retaining his hold of the French marigold. “A vulgar, ordinary garden-flower is not in accordance with your dress to-night — or with you.”
“You presume upon your position,” retorted Adeline, pushing aside the white camellia, and struggling to keep down her anger and her tears. “Do not insult me, sir, but give me back my own flower,”
“What is all this?” demanded M. de Castella, coming up. “Adeline, you are excited.”
“I have incurred your daughter’s displeasure, it would seem, sir,” explained the Baron, showing symptoms of excitement in his turn. “Mademoiselle appeared in the rooms wearing this flower — a worthless, common garden-flower! — and because I wished to present her with one more suitable, she seems to imply that I only do it by way of insult. I don’t understand, ma foi!”
“Nor I,” returned M. de Castella. “Take the camellia, Adeline,” he added, sternly and coldly. “Caprice and coquetry are beneath you.”
The Baron put the camellia in her now unresisting hand, and amused himself with pulling to pieces the p
etals of the other flower. Adeline burst into a violent paroxysm of tears, and hurried on to the colonnade.”
And all about a stupid French marigold!
“Let her go and have a cry to herself,” said M. de Castella, walking off with the Baron; “it will bring her to reason. The coquetry of women passes belief. They are all alike. It appears I was mistaken when I deemed my daughter an exception.”
Adeline, in her tears and excitement, rushed across the lawn. It was certainly a senseless thing to cry about, but, just then, a straw would have ruffled her equanimity. She had been compelled to wear the hated bracelet: she had been told that she would very speedily be made the wife of de la Chasse; she had stood by him, recognized by the crowd of guests as his future wife; and, blended with all this, was a keen sensation of disappointment at the non-appearance of Mr. St. John. She stood with her forehead pressed against the bark of a tree, sobbing aloud in her anguish where none could hear her. Presently, her ear caught the sound of footsteps, and she prepared to dart further away: but they were some that she knew and loved too well. He was coming through the shrubbery at a rapid pace, and she stood out and confronted him.
“Why, Adeline!” he exclaimed, in astonishment. And, then, the momentary restraint on her feelings removed, she fell forward in his arms, and sobbed aloud with redoubled violence.
“Oh, Adeline, what ails you? What has happened? Be calm, be calm, my only love! I am by your side now: what grief is there that I cannot soothe away?”
He became quite alarmed at her paroxysm of grief, and, half leading, half carrying her to the nearest bench, seated her there and laid her head upon his arm, and held her gently to him, and spoke not a word until she was calmer.
By degrees she told him all. The gift of the bracelet, her mother’s threats of the coming marriage — threats they sounded to Adeline — and the dispute with the Baron. Upon this last point she was rather obscure. “I had a simple flower in my dress, and he wanted me to replace it with a rare one, a camellia.” She did not say it was the one he had given her; she would rather have led him to think that it was not: never, until she should be indeed his, could she tell him how passionately and entirely she loved. But he divined all; he required no telling. And yet, knowing this; knowing, as he did, how her very life was bound up in his; how could he, only a few weeks later, doubt, or profess to doubt, of this enduring love?
“Adeline,” he said, as he paced the narrow path restlessly in the moonlight, she still sitting on the bench, “I have done very wrong: wrong by you and your friends, wrong by myself, wrong by de la Chasse. I see it now. I ought to have declared all before he came to Beaufoy. I will see M. de Castella tomorrow morning.”
She shivered, as if struck by a cold wind. “Remember your promise.”
“It must be done,” he answered. “I yielded too readily to your wishes, perhaps to my own motives for desiring delay. But for you to be looked upon as his future wife — condemned to accept and wear his presents — this shall not be. It is placing us all three in a false position; you must see that it is. Neither did I know that the marriage was being hastened on.”
“He goes away to-morrow morning, and all immediate danger will be over,” she urged. “Do not yet speak words that might — nay, that would — lead to our separation! Let us have another week or two for consideration; and of — of happiness.”
“I cannot imagine why you entertain these gloomy anticipations,” he rejoined; “why think that my speaking to your father will be the signal for warfare. Believe me, Adeline, the St. Johns of Castle Wafer are not accustomed to find their overtures for an alliance despised; they have mated with the noblest in their own land.”
“Oh, it is not that; it is not that! Frederick, you know it is not. — Hark!” she suddenly broke off, starting from her seat as if to fly. “There are footsteps approaching from the house. If it should be papa! — or de la Chasse!”
“And what if it be?” he answered, drawing her hand within his arm and raising himself to his full height, in the haughty spirit that was upon him, to stand and confront the intruders. “I will explain all now: and show that you are doing neither wrong nor harm in being here with me, for that you are my affianced wife.” —
But the footsteps, whosesoever they might be, passed off in a different direction: and they strolled on, talking, to the borders of the miniature lake. It was nearly as light as day, very warm, very beautiful. White fleecy clouds floated around the moon; the air, redolent with the odour of flowers, was one balmy breath of perfume; and Adeline forgot her trouble in the peaceful scene.
“What made you so late?” she asked. “I had fancied you would come early.”
“I have been to Odesque.”
“To Odesque!”
He was drawing a small paper from his waistcoat pocket. Adeline saw that it contained a ring of plain gold. Motioning to her to take her glove off — and she obeyed mechanically — he proceeded to place it on her finger; speaking solemn words:
“With this ring I will thee wed: with my body I thee worship; with all my worldly goods I will thee endow, until death us do part: and thus do I plight unto thee my troth.” She knew the slightly altered words were in the English Protestant marriage-service, for she had heard Rose, and some of the other schoolgirls as foolish as Rose was, repeat them in their thoughtless pastime. There was a solemnity in Mr. St. John’s voice and manner which imparted an awe to her feelings, never before experienced. The tears of deep emotion rose to her eyes and her frame trembled: she could not have been more strongly moved, had she in very truth been plighting her troth to him before the holy altar.
“Take you care of it, Adeline. Let none remove it from your finger as I removed the other. It shall be your weddingring.”
“It is not the same ring?” she whispered, unable quite to recover herself. “His.”
“His! Look here, Adeline.”
He took another ring from his pocket as he spoke. It was cut in two parts; and he threw them into the water.
“There goes his ring, Adeline. May his pretensions go with it!”
“It is for this you have been to Odesque?”
“It is.”
They turned to the house, walking quickly now, neither caring for Adeline’s absence to be so prolonged as to attract notice. Long as it may have seemed to take in the telling, she had yet been away from the house but a few minutes. Adeline could not quite forget her fears.
“If mamma could only be kept from ordering the trousseau!” she suddenly exclaimed, more in answer to her own thoughts than to him.
“Where’s the necessity of preventing her?”
She looked up wonderingly, and caught his smile full of meaning, all apparent in the moonlight.
“The things ordered and intended for Madame de la Chasse — will they not serve equally well for Mrs. Frederick St. John?”
“Oh — but” — and her downcast face felt glowing with heat “nothing will be wanted at all yet for — any one.”
“Indeed! I think they will be wanted very soon. Do you suppose,” he added, laughing, “I should be permitted to carry you away with me to the South without an outfit?”
“I am not going to the South now,” she quickly said.
“Yes, Adeline. I hope you and I shall winter there.”
“I am quite well now.”
“I know you are: and that it will be almost a superfluous precaution. Nevertheless, it is well to be on the safe side. My darling!” and he bent over her, “you would not be dismayed at the prospect of passing a whole winter alone with me?”
Dismayed! To the uttermost parts of the earth with him, and for a whole lifetime Father, mother, country, home — what were they all, in comparison with him?
As they gained the open lawn, a dark figure swept across their path. Adeline shrank at being seen alone with Mr. St. John. It was Father Marc, the officiating priest of the little neighbouring chapel, and the family confessor, a worthy and very zealous man. He turned and looked at Ade
line, but merely said, “Bon soir, mon enfant,” and took off his hat to Mr. St. John. Mr. St. John raised his in return, saying nothing, and Adeline bent low, as one in contrition.
“Bon soir, mon père.”
She glided onwards to a side door, that she might gain her chamber and see what could be done towards removing the traces of emotion from her face. Whilst Mr. St. John strode round to the front entrance, and rang such a peal upon the tinkling old bell that half-a-dozen servants came flying to the door.
And as Adeline stood by his side that night in the brilliant ball-room, and watched the admiration so many were ready, unsought, to accord him, and marked the cordial regard in which both her father and mother held him, and remembered his lineage and connections, the fortune and position that must eventually be his, she almost reasoned that overtures for her from such a man could never be declined.
But the Baron saw that she had thrown away the white camellia. “Petite coquette!” he exclaimed to himself, in tolerant excuse: not in anger. It never entered into the French brains of the Baron de la Chasse to imagine that the young lady, being under an engagement to marry him, could have the slightest wish to marry any one else.
CHAPTER XXIII.
JEALOUSY.
THE grey walls of the Chateau de Beaufoy basked idly in the evening sun. In the western drawing-room, M. and Madame de Castella, the old lady, and Agnes de Beaufoy were playing whist. Its large window was thrown open to the terrace or colonnade, where had gathered the younger members of the party, the green-striped awning being let down between some of the outer pillars. Mary Carr and Adeline were seated, unravelling a heap of silks, which had got into a mess in the ivory work-basket; Rose Darling flitted about amongst the exotics, her fine hair shining like threads of gold when, ever and anon, it came in contact with the sunlight, as she flirted — it was very like it — with Mr. St. John. But Rose began to turn cross, for he teased her.
“Did you write to England for the song to-day? “ she asked. “Ah, don’t answer: I see you forgot it. Most of the writing you are guilty of goes to one person, I expect. No wonder you forget other matters.”