by Ellen Wood
She knew it all now: the secret of her father’s obstinacy, and why she must give up Mr. St. John and marry de la Chasse. She knew that if her father consented to her heretical marriage, or if she of herself persisted in contracting it, the Curse of the Church was to alight upon her, and upon her father’s house. The Curse of the Church! Adeline had been reared in all the belief and doctrines of the Romish faith, and she could no more have dared to act in defiance of that awful curse, than she would have dared to raise her hand against her own life. She leaned her head back on the uncomfortable chair, and moaned aloud in her overwhelming anguish. It might be cruel of Father Marc to have whispered of such a thing, but he had done it in his zealous love. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.
“The alternative of a convent,” she gasped, “cannot that be given me?”
“No,” replied M. de Castella, who was painfully frigid throughout the interview, perhaps as a guard to his own feelings. “You must marry. Your mother and I cannot consent to lose you from our sight, as, in the will of Providence, we lost Maria. You must choose between this Englishman and him to whom you are betrothed. If you marry the Englishman, you — and I, Adeline — will be put beyond the pale of Heaven. Marry him who expects, ere three days, to be your husband, and you will lead a tranquil life here, with sure hope of a Hereafter.”
“Does my mother know of this?” she asked.
“No. She will know it soon enough if your decision be against us.”
“Oh papa, papa!” she burst forth, in momentary abandonment to the feelings that seemed to be killing her, “can I not live on with you and mamma always, unmarried?”
“You cannot, Adeline. The only child that is left to us must fulfil woman’s appointed destiny on earth. And not shrink from it,” he sternly added.
There was little more to be said, nothing more to be understood. She comprehended it all, and the situation she was placed in. She knew that, for her, all of peace and joy on earth was over. A mirror of the future flashed before her mind’s eye: she saw herself battling with its waves, and it was one broad sea of never-ending agony. Her heart fluttered violently, as it had never before fluttered: there was a strange sensation within her, as of some mighty weight, some torment rushing to her brain. She tottered as she rose from the chair, and laid hold of the table to steady herself. “There — there is nothing more?” she whispered.
“Nothing, Adeline. Save to give your reply to Mr. St. John.”
She was passing to the door when a word arrested her. She leaned against one of the secretaires as her father spoke.
“I do not ask what your decision will be, Adeline. I have laid the case before you, as it exists, without circumlocution and without disguise. I said last night I would not bias your choice by a word of mine, and I will not.”
The words sounded in her ear very like a mockery, and wild thoughts came across her, as she stood, of falling at her father’s feet, and beseeching him to have mercy. But she remembered that mercy, for her, did not rest with him.
Signor de Castella became alarmed at her ghastly look. He went forward and took her hands, speaking with more emotion than he had ever betrayed.
“Adeline, may our holy Mother support you through this!
I have but your welfare at heart, and were your temporal interests alone in question, I would not oppose your inclinations. Child, I would give the half of my fortune, now, to ensure your happiness here. But — when it comes to pass that the interests of Eternity are at stake, no choice, as it seems to me, is left us. The Church has you in its keeping, and must be obeyed: I, at least, have no alternative: act, you, as you please. I have said that I would not coerce you; I do not. If your decision be against us, you shall depart for England to-day under the protection of your Aunt Agnes, who will remain and see you married. Hush! do not tell your decision to me; indeed, I am trying to keep my promise of leaving it entirely to you. Make your choice, and then give it to Mr. St. John.”
He had released her as he was speaking. She was laying her hand upon the door, when her father spoke again. She turned towards him.
“There is one thing, Adeline. Whatever be your decision you must not impart the nature of the impediment to Mr. St. John.”
“Not tell him the cause!” she gasped — and the very words spoke all too plainly of what the decision would be— “not tell him!”
“Holy saints, no!” he rejoined, his voice rising between surprise, anger, and emotion. “I had scarcely thought it necessary to caution you. Not a word must be breathed. Our Church permits not her modes of dealing to be revealed to — to heretics.”
He had made a pause at the last word, as if unwilling to speak it. With all his coldness and his bigotry, he was an essentially courteous man at heart. Adeline clasped her hands in piteous beseeching, but he interrupted the prayer hovering upon her lips.
“It must not be, Adeline: Mr. St. John is not one of us. Surely you are not growing disaffected!” he continued, in a sharp tone. “It has occurred to me at times that I may have done wrong in allowing you to be so much here in your grandmother’s home. When she married she quitted her Protestant faith and embraced ours, but I doubt whether she has ever been zealous in it at heart.”
The tears shone in her eyes at the accusation, but she was too miserable, too agitated to let them fall.
“Only a hint to him, papa!” she implored. “Permit it to me in mercy. Only a hint!”
“Not a hint; not a word,” he sternly rejoined. “I forbid it. The Church forbids it. Promise this.”
“I promise,” she faintly said, yielding to the compulsion.
“Kiss the crucifix.”
He took down the small, beautiful image of our Saviour, in carved ivory, that was wont to hang over the mantelpiece, and held it to her lips. She did as she was told, and so sealed the secret.
There was nothing more. Adeline, a very ghost of despair, quitted the cabinet. Outside she encountered Rose.
“What a long time you have been in there!” was the young lady’s eager exclamation. “Your wedding-dress is come, with lots more things, nearly a fourgon full, Louise says. They are gone upstairs to inspect them, and I have been waiting for you, all impatience. No reason why we should not admire them, you know, though matters are cross. But — Adeline!”
Adeline lifted her eyes at the sudden exclamation.
“How ill you look!”
“Is Mr. St. John in the drawing-room?” was the only rejoinder.
“He has been there this half-hour. I left him there, ‘all alone in his glory,’ for I could stay away from the view no longer. I shall go upstairs without you, if you are not coming.”
“I will follow you presently,” she murmured.
“Adeline, let me into a secret. I won’t tell. Will the dress be worn for the purpose it was intended — de la Chasse’s wedding?”
“Yes,” she feebly answered, passing on to the west drawingroom.
Rose arrested her impatient steps, and gazed after her.
“Whatever is the matter? How strangely ill she looks! And she says the marriage is to come off with de la Chasse! I wonder whether that’s gospel: or nothing but a blind? When the wedding-morning comes, we may find Jock o’ Hazeldean enacted in real life. It would be glorious fun!”
Mr. St. John was pacing the room when Adeline went in. He met her with a sunny smile, and would have held her to him. But Adeline de Castella was possessed of extreme rectitude of feeling: and she now knew that in two days’ time she should be the wife of the Baron de la Chasse. Alas! in spite of the fears that sometimes assailed her, she had, from the beginning, too surely counted on becoming the wife of Mr. St. John. She evaded him, and walked forward, panting for breath.
He was alarmed as he gazed upon her. He saw the agitation she was in; the fearful aspect of her features, which still wore the ghastly hue they had assumed in the cabinet. He took one of her hands within his, but even that she withdrew.
“In the name of Heaven, Adeline,
what is this?”
She essayed to answer him, and could not. The palpitation in her throat impeded her utterance. The oppression on her breath increased.
“Adeline! have you no pity for my suspense?”
“I — I — am frying to tell you,” she gasped out, with a jerk between most of her words. “I am going — to — marry him — de la Chasse.”
He looked at her for some moments without speaking. “You have been ill, Adeline,” he said at length. “I saw last night the state you were in, and would have given much to remain by you.”
“I am not wandering,” she answered, detecting the bent of his thoughts. “I am telling you truth. I must marry him.”
“Adeline — if you are indeed in full possession of your senses — explain what you would say. I do not understand.”
“It is easy enough to be understood,” she replied, leaning against the side of the large window for support. “On Saturday, their fixed wedding-day, I shall marry him.”
“Oh, this is shameful! this is dreadful!” he exclaimed. “How can they have tampered with you like this?”
“They have not tampered with me, Frederick. I decide of my own will.”
“It is disgraceful! disgraceful!” he uttered. “Where is Signor de Castella? I will tell him what I think of his conduct. He talk of honour!”
She placed her hand upon his arm to detain him, for he was turning from the room. “He can tell you nothing,” she said. “He does not yet know my decision. Do not blame him.”
“He said last night that you should be free to choose,” impatiently returned Mr. St John.
“And I am free. He — laid” — (she hardly knew how to frame her words and yet respect her oath)— “he laid the case fully before me, and left me to decide for myself. Had I chosen you, he said my Aunt Agnes should accompany us to-day to England, and see me married. But — I — dared not — I” — (she burst into a flood of most distressing tears)—” I must marry de la Chasse.”
“Explain, explain.” He was getting hot and angry.
“I have nothing to explain. Only that my father left it to me, and that I must marry him: and that my heart will break.”
When he perfectly understood her, understood that there was no hope, the burst of reproach that came from him was terrible. Yet might it not be excused? He had parted from her on the previous night in the full expectation that she would be his wife: now could he think otherwise after all that had occurred, and the concluding promise of M. de Castella? Yet now, without preface, without reason, she told him that she renounced him for his rival. A reason, unhappily, she dared not give.
Oh, once more, in spite of her resistance, Mr. St. John held her to his heart. He spoke to her words of the sweetest and most persuasive eloquence; he besought her to fly with him, to become his beloved wife. And she was obliged to wrest herself from him, and assure him that his prayers were wasted; that she was compelled to be more obdurate than even her father had been.
It was a fault, you know, of Mr. St. John’s to be hasty and passionate, when moved to it by any great cause; but perhaps a storm of passion so violent as that he gave way to now, had never yet shaken him. His reproaches were keen: entirely unreasonable: but an angry man does not weigh his words.
“False and fickle that you are, you have never loved me! I see it all now. You have but led me on, to increase at the last moment the triumph of de la Chasse. It may have been a planned thing between you! Your true vows have been given to him, your false ones to me.”
Adeline placed her hands on his, as if imploring mercy, and would have knelt before him; but he held her up, not tenderly.
“If I thought you did not know your words are untrue, it would kill me,” she faltered. “Had we been married, as, until this day, I thought and prayed we should be, you would have known how entirely I love you; how the love will endure unto death. I can tell you this, now, because we are about to separate, and it is the last time we must ever be together in this world. Oh, Frederick! mercy! mercy! — do not profess to think I have loved another.”
“You are about to marry him.”
“I shall marry him, hating him; I shall marry him, loving you; do you not think I have enough of misery?”
“As I am a living man,” spoke Mr. St. John, “I cannot understand this! You say your father told you to choose between us?”
“I feel as if I should die,” she murmured; “I have felt so, at times, for several weeks past. There is something hanging over me, I think,” she continued, passing her hand across her forehead, abstractedly.
“Adeline,” he impatiently repeated, “are you deceiving me? Did your father give you free liberty to choose between us?”
“Yes; he gave it me — after placing the whole case before me,” she was obliged to answer.
“And you tell me that you have deliberately chosen de la Chasse? You give me no explanation; but cast me off like this?”
“I dare not give it. That is” — striving to soften the words that were wrung from her—” I have no explanation to give. Oh, Frederick, dearest Frederick — let me call you so in your presence, for the first and last and only time — do not reproach me? Indeed, I must marry him.”
“Of your own free deliberation, you will, on Saturday next, walk to the altar and become his wife?” he reiterated. “Do you mean to tell me that?”
She made a gesture in the affirmative, her sobs rising hysterically. What with her confused state of feeling, and the anxiety she was under to preserve inviolate the obligation so solemnly undertaken, she was perhaps even less explanatory than she might have been. But who, in these moments of agitation, can act precisely as he ought?
“Fie upon you! fie upon you!” he cried, contemptuously. “You boast of loving! you may well do so, when you had two lovers to practise upon. I understand it all, now; your objection to my speaking, until the last moment, to M. de Castella; you would keep us both in your train, forsooth, incense to your vanity! You have but fooled me by pretending to listen to my love; you have led me on, and played with me, a slave to be sacrificed on his shrine! I give you up to him joyfully. I am well quit of you.
“Mercy! mercy!” she implored, shrinking down, and clasping her hands together.
“Fool that I was to be so deceived! Light and fickle that you are, you are not worthy to be enshrined in an honourable man’s heart. I will thrust your image from mine, until not a trace, not a recollection of it, is left. I thank God it will be no impossible task. The spell that bound me to you is broken. Deceitful, worthless girl, thus to have betrayed your falseheartedness at the last: but better for me to have discovered it before marriage than after. I thank you for this, basely treated as I have been.”
She made an effort to interrupt him, a weak, broken-hearted effort; but his fierce torrent of speech overpowered it.
“I go now; and, in leaving this place, shall leave its memories behind. I will never willingly think of you again in life. Contemptuously as you have cast off me, so will I endeavour in my heart to cast off you, and all remembrance of you. I wish you good-bye, for ever. And I hope, for de la Chasse’s sake, your conduct to him, as a wife, may be different from what it has been to me.”
There was a strange, overwhelming agony, both of body and mind, at work within her, such as she had never experienced or dreamt of; — a chaos of confused ideas, the most painful of which was the conviction that he — was leaving her for ever in contempt and scorn. A wild desire to detain him; to convince him that at least she was not the false-hearted being he had painted her; to hear some kinder words from his lips, and those recalled, crowded to her brain, mixing itself up with the confusion and despair already there.
With his mocking farewell he had hastened from the room by way of the colonnade; it was — the nearest way — to the path leading to his home, and he was — in no mood to — stand upon ceremony. Adeline went after him, but his strides were quick, and she did not gain upon his steps. She called aloud to him, in her flood-ti
de of despair.
He turned and saw her, flying down the steps after him. One repellent, haughty gesture alone escaped him, and he quickened his pace onwards. She saw the movement of contempt; but she still pressed on, and got half-way across the lawn. There she sank upon the grass, at first in a kneeling posture, her arms outstretched towards him, as if they could bring him back, and a sharp, wailing cry of anguish escaping from her lips.
Why did he not look round? There was just time for it, ere he was hidden in the dark shrubbery: he would have seen enough to drive away his storm of anger. But waxing stronger, in his wrath, he strode on, without deigning to cast another glance behind.
They were in the chamber over the western drawing-room, examining the things just arrived from Paris. Rose happened to be at the window, and saw Adeline fall. Uttering an exclamation, which caused Mary Carr also to look, she turned from it, and ran down to her. Mary followed, but her pace was slow, for she suspected nothing amiss, and thought Adeline had but stooped to look at something on the grass. When Mary reached the colonnade, Rose was up with Adeline, and seemed to be raising her head.
What was it? Miss Carr strained her eyes in a sort of bewildered wonder. Of their two dresses, the one was white, the other a delicate lilac muslin, and strange spots appeared on each of them, spots of a fresh bright crimson colour, that glowed in the sun. Were they spots of — blood? And — was Adeline’s mouth stained with it? Mary turned sick as the truth flashed upon her. Adeline must have broken a bloodvessel.