by Ellen Wood
He had drawn her arm within his own, and was leading her back to the Rectory. She could hardly keep up with him.
“Where are you hurrying me to?”
“To the dean. He will take care of you to Castle Wafer.”
It may be that she thought some one else might have taken care of her. But she said nothing. Just before they reached the Rectory door, Mr. St. John stopped under the shade of the laurels.
“Georgina, I must say a serious word to you. Put away nonsense for a minute, and hear me. I think I have saved you from a great danger; will you make me a promise in return?”
“From a great danger!” she repeated, the words rendering her as serious as he was. “What danger? What can you mean?”
“I cannot tell precisely what danger, neither can I say more particularly what I mean. Nevertheless I think I am right. It is not good for you to be about alone just now, whether ‘ before nightfall or after it. You must give me your promise not to be so.”
“What is there to harm me?” she whispered, involuntarily clinging more closely to his arm.
“Leave that with me for the present. Only trust me, and do as I say. Will you promise?”
“Yes, if there is a necessity for it. I promise you.”
Her earnest face was raised in the moonlight. She had never seen him so solemn as now. He bent his head.
“Will you seal the compact, Georgina?”
Instinct, and the grave tender tone, told her what he meant. Her eyes filled with tears; but she did not draw her face away, and he left a kiss upon her lips.
“Mind, Georgina, that’s as binding as an oath,” he said, as he walked on. “Take care that you strictly keep your promise. There is urgent necessity why you should do so. Sometime I may tell you why, if you are good. I may be telling you all sorts of things besides.”
Her face was bent to conceal its hot blushes. Heaven seemed suddenly to have opened for Georgina Beauclerc.
“Halloa!” cried the dean, as he met them in the hall. “I thought you had gone on with your mamma, Georgina.”
“She came back to walk with you, sir,” said Mr. St. John, only waiting to speak the words and then hastening away again.
Mr. Pym was standing near the rocks as he got up to him. “Where did you hide yourself?” cried Frederick. “You seemed to vanish into air. I could see you nowhere.”
“I slipped behind here,” answered the surgeon, indicating the rocks. “Was not one of those ladies Mrs. Carleton?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought it might be as well for her not to see me here. I wish to call at Castle Wafer by accident, you understand.”
Frederick St. John nodded. “Could you see her teeth and her glistening eyes? She was stealthily following Miss Beauclerc. For what purpose? I am thankful we were here.”
“Where is Miss Beauclerc now?”
“She is coming on with the dean. I have cautioned her not to go out alone. Mr. Pym, what is to be done? This state of things cannot be allowed to go on. I call upon you, as a good and true man, to aid us, if it be in your power.”
Mr. Pym made no reply. He walked on in his favourite attitude, his hands clasped behind his back, just as he was walking in that sorrowful chamber, the evening you first beheld him; and his face wore, to Mr. St. John’s thinking, a strangely troubled look in the moonlight.
CHAPTER XXXV.
ON THE TERRACE.
MR. PYM went to the house alone. Frederick St. John met him in the hall as if by accident, and took him at once into the dining-room. Any suspicion that they had met before at the Rectory and come away from it together, was as far from the minds of the assembled company, as that they had both dropped from the clouds.
Mrs. St. John, who was better and had come down since dinner, Mrs. Beauclerc, Mrs. Carleton, and Sir Isaac, had sat down to whist. Mrs. Darling and Miss Denison were talking to each other at the centre table; Miss Denison abusing Georgina as the wildest girl in Christendom, Mrs. Darling protesting that she could not be half so wild as her own daughter Rose. Mrs. Darling was all wonder and astonishment when Mr. Pym came in. What could have brought him to Lexington? — how very kind of him to call and see her. And it was she who took him up to introduce him to Sir Isaac.
One moment’s recoil, one startled look at the face, and Mrs. Carleton held out her hand to the little surgeon, and was her own calm and gracious self. Seated at whist there, opposite to Sir Isaac, her voice low and sweet, her manner so gentle and collected, it would never have entered into any one’s mind to imagine that she had been gliding about stealthily in the moonlight like a ghost, or a female poacher on forbidden ground: and perhaps the surgeon might have been excused his momentary doubt whether it was really Mrs. Carleton that they had seen.
“How well you are looking!” he exclaimed, as he shook hands with her.
And it was no hollow compliment. The woman he saw before him now, radiant in beauty, was no more like the distressing shadow he had visited at Ypres, than he himself was like a lamp-post. Mrs. Carleton laughed. Yes, she said, she was quite well now.
Mr. Pym begged he might not interrupt the game, and drew away. Close upon that, the dean and his daughter came in, and then came tea. Ere the surgeon had well swallowed his, he was pacing the terrace outside with Mrs. Darling, no one paying attention to them.
“You see I have obeyed your summons, Mrs. Darling,” he began; “have called at Castle Wafer by accident, as you desired. What is the business that you wish to consult me upon?”
Mrs. Darling had caught up her daughter’s black lace shawl as she left the room, and put it over her head; just as Charlotte had so recently worn it upon hers. She pulled it tightly round her silk gown as she answered —
“I wish to speak to you about my daughter: I fear she is ill.”
“In body, or in mind?”
A moment’s struggle with herself ere she should answer. But no; even now, although she had summoned the surgeon, at a great cost and trouble, to her aid, she could not bring her lips to admit a hint of the fatal malady.
“In mind!” she echoed, rather indignantly. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Pym. What should be wrong with Mrs. Carleton’s mind?”
“As you please,” he said, with indifference. “I can go back to-night if I am not wanted.”
They had come to the end of the gravel walk, and Mrs. Darling stood still, apparently contemplating the lovely prospect to be seen from Castle Wafer. How anxious looked her face in the moonlight; but for those betraying beams the surgeon might not have read the struggle that was going on within her breast.
“Why should you think anything was wrong with her mind?” she again asked, but this time the tones were of pain, not of resentment.
“Mrs. Darling, it may be as well that we should understand each other,” said he. “I did not come here to be trifled with. Either let there be confidence between us, or let me go back whence I came. It may facilitate matters if I tell you I have cause to suspect your daughter’s mind to be at present not altogether in a healthy state. If I do go back, I fear it will be my duty to intimate as much beforehand to Sir Isaac St. John.”
She looked perfectly aghast, “What do you mean, Mr. Pym?”
“I mean just what I say, and no more. Oh, Mrs. Darling, what nonsense this is — you and I to play at bo-peep with each other! We have been doing it all the years of your daughter’s life. You cannot forget how much I know of the past: do you think I have drowned my memory in a draught of Lethe’s waters? Surely if there is one man on earth whom you might consult confidentially, it is myself. I know as much as you know.”
Mrs. Darling burst into tears, and sobbed for some minutes. “I shall be better now,” she said; “it will do me good. Heaven alone knows what the tension has been.”
“And now just tell me the whole, from beginning to end,” said Mr. Pym, in a more kindly tone, “you ought to have done it years ago. You may be sure I will do what I can for the best: and there may be safety in counsel.�
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Now that the ice was broken, she entered pretty freely into details, and soon experienced that relief, and it may also be said that satisfaction in talking, which this confidential disclosure of some long-secret trouble is sure to bring. She told Mr. Pym how, ever since Benja’s death, she had had her doubts of Charlotte’s perfect sanity: and she freely confessed that her hasty return to Castle Wafer was caused by a telegraphic message from Prance, who was growing alarmed at her mistress’s symptoms.
“What symptoms were they?” inquired the doctor.
“I don’t know that I can enumerate them to you; they were little odds and ends of things that Prance has noticed. Not much, taken separately, but curious in the aggregate. Of course the message did not contain them: I have learnt them since I arrived. One thing I disliked more than all the rest — Prance awoke one night and found her mistress was out of the room. She was hastening away in search of her, and saw her coming out of Miss Beauclerc’s chamber. Now, for some reason or other, Charlotte has taken a prejudice against Miss Beauclerc—”
“A moment, Mrs. Darling. If I am to help you with advice, you must speak without disguise. Do not say ‘for some reason or other;’ tell the reason, if you know it.”
Another struggle with herself: must she confess? Mrs. Darling clasped her hands in pain.
“Oh, how cruel it is to have to say these things! And of Charlotte, who has always been so reticent, so honourable, whatever her other failings. There! let me speak out and have done with it. I believe she is jealous of Miss Beauclerc: of Miss Beauclerc and of Sir Isaac St. John.”
“Your daughter would like to remain here for ever — mistress of Castle Wafer, and Sir Isaac’s wife?”
“Yes, I do believe it is so. And I could have believed such planning of any one in the world rather than of Charlotte. I have striven to persuade her to leave with me, and it is of no use. I would not for the world that she should marry again.”
“She ought not to have married at all,” remarked the surgeon.
“I could not help it. I did my best. You don’t know what a care Charlotte has always been to me!”
“To return to Miss Beauclerc. Do you fear Mrs. Carleton might injure her?”
“Not if she retains her reason. But — should that leave her, even momentarily, — Mr. Pym,” she broke off, “it was because I found myself incompetent to deal with these troubles that I wrote for you.”
“You must take her away from Castle Wafer without delay.”
“But she will not be taken away. In all ordinary matters she is as sane as I am; as capable of judging, of arguing, and of sensibly acting. It is only now and then that a sort of paroxysm comes over her. It may be only violent passion, to which you know she has ever been subject; but, it may be something worse. She is then, as I believe, incapable of controlling her actions; and should she find an opportunity of doing an injury at these times she might do it. There are two people in this house against whom I can see she is desperately incensed: Miss Beauclerc and Honour Tritton. Should she find herself alone with either of them in one of these paroxysms — —”
Mrs. Darling stopped. The subject was too painful to continue. But the surgeon took up the thread in a quiet tone.
“We might have a second edition of the Alnwick tragedy.” Mrs. Darling — he could see it in the bright night — seemed to recoil a step. But she strove to answer with more than customary calmness.
“The Alnwick tragedy! I do not understand.”
“When Alnwick’s heir was — killed.”
“Oh, Mr. Pym, Mr. Pym! you cannot think that was anything but a miserable accident?” cried the unfortunate mother. “It was nothing else. Honour alone was in fault.”
“It may be that we shall never know,” he answered. “My impression — nay, my belief — you and I had better be outspoken now, Mrs. Darling — always was, that Mrs. Carleton had something to do with that. I think at the time you entertained the same opinion.”
Mrs. Darling made no answer. She walked on, her scared face raised in that tell-tale moonlight; her very lips white.
“I thought the probabilities, knowing what you and I know, were greatly against her at the time,” repeated the surgeon; “I think them greater now. You are aware, I presume, that the imaginary image of Benja and the lighted church haunted her for months? And in that show of lanterns in France, on St. Martin’s Eve—”
“How did you hear of that?” interrupted Mrs. Darling. “Oh, I get to hear of many things,” was the reply. “It does not matter how. I fear this terror, in one so cold and impassive as your daughter has always been, is rather suggestive of a guilty conscience.”
“Why recall this?” asked Mrs. Darling, with a sob. “I think you are wrong in your suspicions.”
“I do not recall it to give you pain. Only to impress upon you how essential it is, with these doubts upon our minds, that Mrs. Carleton should be removed from Castle Wafer.”
“Indeed, I see it as strongly as you do. But you know what her will has always been. And if our suspicion of her state of mind is wrong, and she is really sane, we are not justified in forcing her actions. Can you remain a few days and watch her, so as to form an opinion of her state? There’s a plain, comfortable inn at hand, the Barley Mow, and you could be here very much in the daytime.”
“For the matter of that, I could contrive to get invited to stay here,” observed the surgeon, with a cough. “That good-natured brother of Sir Isaac’s is sure to ask me. And, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Darling, if I undertake to watch her at all, it must be a close and uninterrupted watch.”
“Close and uninterrupted!” repeated Mrs. Darling, whom the words did not altogether please. “I am so very fearful of any suspicion being excited abroad as to Charlotte’s state.”
“That suspicion already exists,” remarked the doctor. “Your daughter’s manners — these paroxysms that you speak of — have been observed and commented on. It was only a post or two before I got your summons, that I received a letter from this neighbourhood, implying doubts of Mrs. Carleton’s state of mind, and inquiring if I could inform the writer whether insanity had been in her family.”
Mrs. Darling’s breath was nearly taken away with astonishment. “Who could have sent the letter? Surely, not Sir Isaac!”
“The letter was a confidential letter, and I cannot name the writer.”
“If it was not Sir Isaac, it must have been Frederick St. John. Why need he meddle?”
“It was neither Frederick St. John nor Sir Isaac: I may tell you that much. I only mention this to prove to you that even were we willing to allow matters to go on as they have been going, it is now impossible. A weighty responsibility lies upon me, Mrs. Darling: and something must be done in one shape or another. Had I received no summons from you, I think I should still have come to Lexington.”
Mrs. Darling walked to the end of the terrace before replying. Matters seemed to be growing complicated. Was the time of exposure really come? It had always lain upon her with an awful dread.
“But what can you do?” she asked. “Suppose, after watching Charlotte, you come to the conclusion that there’s nothing really the matter with her—”
“But I should not come to that conclusion,” he interrupted. “Were I to remain in the house a month, and see no proof whatever of insanity, I could not be sure that it did not exist.
We know how cunning these people are, and—”
“Oh, Mr. Pym, how cruelly you speak!”
“I am sorry to do so. What I was about to say, in answer to your question, is this. Allowing that I perceive no present grounds for alarm, I must still assume that such grounds do exist; in short, both you and I know they do: and there will be one of two courses to pursue. Either you must remove your daughter from Castle Wafer before I quit it: or I must get rid of my responsibility by disclosing my fears to Sir Isaac St. John.”
“No, no; not to him — not to any one if it can be prevented,” implored Mrs. Darling. “I will get Cha
rlotte away. Anything rather than make the dread public. Think how long I have succeeded in concealing it.”
“To speak to Sir Isaac would not be to make it public. And I have already told you, Mrs. Darling, it is not so entirely a secret as you have supposed. However, if you remove Charlotte, undertaking that she does not return, there will be no cause for my speaking to any one.”
“I’ll do it all; I’ll try and do it,” said Mrs. Darling. “And now about your own stay at Castle Wafer. How shall you manage it?”
“Leave it to me,” replied Mr. Pym. “We medical men often possess a pass-key in an emergency. I think Mrs. Carleton will not like my staying. She did not seem pleased to see me.”
“No?”
“It struck me that she did not. I observed a strange sort of shiver, a look of terror, pass over her face when she saw me.”
“How observant you are!” was Mrs. Darling’s comment, “I saw nothing of it.”
“It is our business to be observant.”
“Of course. And very useful I dare say you find the habit.”
“You spoke of Honour Tritton,” resumed the surgeon, passing by the other remark. “Why do you suppose—”
“Hush!” breathed Mrs. Darling in a warning voice, and she laid her hand upon his arm to enforce the caution more emphatically. “Is that Charlotte?”
Some one had cautiously raised the window of an upper room, and was peeping out. Mr. Pym’s quick eyes saw at once that it was not Charlotte, but Prance. Mrs. Prance had her share of curiosity as well as more demonstrative people.
“We had better go in, Mrs. Darling,” remarked the surgeon. “Should Mrs. Carleton come out and see us talking together, she might fancy my visit here had reference to her, and be forthwith on her guard accordingly. As she was — I know she was — on her guard when I went to Ypres.”
The evening was not quite over, when the anxious pacers on the terrace re-entered the drawing-room; the whist players were just rising. Mrs. Carleton came over at once to Mr. Pym. Handsome and stately did she look, her rich dress sweeping the ground; her face calm, her manner gracious, she seemed just as sane as Mr. Pym himself. He happened to be looking with some interest at Miss Beauclerc; a fair, lovely, attractive girl, in her pretty white dress, and with her grey-blue honest eyes.