by Ellen Wood
Her eyes went far out again to that light in the west. The words carried her back again to those past days, — to the handsome boy who had so loved her.
“You never cared for him, poor fellow!” observed Mr. St. John.
“No; I never cared but for one in my life,” she softly whispered.
“I know that. He was the first to tell me of it. Not that I — as I believe now — needed telling. Georgina, they say marriages are made in heaven; I think we might have seen, even then, that we were destined for each other — What’s the matter?”
Georgina darted away from him as if she had been shot.
Her ears were quicker than his. The dean’s carriage was approaching; was close upon them.
“I suppose I may speak to him, Georgina?”
“Perhaps if I said no, you wouldn’t listen to me. You always did contrive to have your own way, and I suppose you will take it still. But I think you are very unfeeling — very cruel; and I am as bad.”
“I know what you mean: that we should allow — this — to ensue upon the news I came to tell you. Poor Mrs. Carleton! We shall have time and to spare, I fear, for all our best sympathies. Oh, child! you don’t know what my anxiety on your score has been! But it has served to show me, what I was only half convinced of before: my love for you.”
The dean came in. Georgina escaped to her mother and Miss Denison. The latter spoke crossly to her. “Ah,” thought Georgina, “would she dare to abuse me if she only knew whose wife I am going to be?” and she actually kissed the astonished Miss Denison, in her great happiness.
Mr. St. John spoke to the dean. Of Mrs. Carleton first: and the dean was both shocked and surprised to find the crisis had come on so quickly. He then said that he and Sir Isaac thought it better that Georgina should for the moment quit Castle Wafer.
“Quite right,” said the dean. “She ought not to have stayed there so long. Of course she should not, had I been aware of this. The fact is, she would not come home; you heard her; she has a great affection for Castle Wafer.”
“Would you very much mind, sir, if she some time came back to it for good?”
“Eh?” said the dean, turning his surprised eyes sharply on Mr. St. John. “Who wants that?”
“I do. I have been asking her if she will do so.”
“And what does she say?”
A smile crossed Mr. St. John’s lips. “She said I generally contrived to have my own way, and she supposed I should have it now.”
“Ah, well; I have thought it might come to that! But I cannot bear to part with her. Frederick St. John” — and the dean spoke with emotion as he wrung his hand—” I would rather you took her from me than any other man in the world.”
It was a lovely day in the following spring, and Paris was gay and bright. In a handsome house in one of its best quarters, its drawing-rooms presenting that blended aspect of magnificence and lightness which you rarely see out of the French capital, were a group of three people; two ladies, both brides of a week or two, and a gentleman. Never did eye gaze on two more charming brides, than Madame de la Chasse, that house’s mistress, and Mrs. Frederick St. John.
Are you prepared to hear that that mistress was Rose? She sat laughing gaily, throwing back, as was her wont of old, that mass of golden curls. Her marriage had taken many by surprise, Frederick St. John for one; and he was now joking her about it.
“It was quite impossible to believe it, you know, Rose. I thought you would not have condescended to marry a Frenchman.”
“I’d rather have married you,” freely confessed Rose, and they all laughed. “But he has changed now; he has become presentable, thanks to me; and I don’t intend to let him lapse again.”
“I am sure you are happy!” said Georgina. “I see it in your face.”
“Well, the truth is, I do like him a little bit,” answered Rose, with a shy sort of blush, which spoke more plainly than her words. “And then he is so fond and proud of me; and heaps such luxuries upon me. It all arose through my staying at the Castellas’ last autumn; he was always coming there.”
“You know, Rose” — and Mr. St. John took her hand and spoke in all seriousness, “that I wish you both, from my very heart, every happiness.”
“And I’m sure I wish it to you,” she said. “And I think you might have told me when I used to tease you about Sarah Beauclerc, that I was wrong in the Christian name. I suspected it last year when I saw you both together at Castle Wafer.”
“Not then,” interrupted Georgina; “you could not have seen it then.”
“I did, though; I’m clever in that line, Mrs. St. John. I used to see his eyes follow you about, and he would leave me at any moment for you. How is Sir Isaac?”
“Quite well,” answered Mr. St. John, “and as happy in my marriage as a child. Our ostensible home, after all, is to be Alnwick; but I dare say we shall spend with him eight months out of every year at Castle Wafer.”
“And my ill-fated half-sister, Mrs. Carleton St. John?” asked Rose, a deep shade of sadness clouding her radiant face. “Is there no hope of her restoration?”
“I fear none,” he replied.
“I wonder sometimes whether they are quite kind to her in that private asylum?”
“There’s no doubt they are. Mr. Pym sees her sometimes; your mamma often. But that of course you know better than I do.”
“I wanted mamma to take me to see her before I left England for good; but she would not.”
“And so much the better,” said Mr. St. John. “It could not be well for you, Madame de la Chasse.”
“‘Madame de la Chasse!’” she echoed. “Well, it sounds curious to hear you call me so. Ah! how strange! that he should have married me; and you — Poor Adeline! Does your wife know about her?” suddenly questioned Rose, in her careless way.
“Yes,” spoke up Georgina.
“Old loves go for nothing when we come to be married. We laugh at the past then, and think what love-sick silly children we were. I have settled down into the most sober wife living.”
“It looks like it,” cried Mr. St. John.
“I have” retorted Rose, “whether it looks like it or not. I shall be as good and steady a matron as your wife there, who loves you to her fingers’ ends.”
Georgina laughed and blushed as they rose to leave, promising plenty of visits to the young Baroness during their stay in Paris.
In going out, they met the Baron. Georgina was surprised to see so good-looking a man; for Mr. St. John had described to her his close-cut hair and his curled moustache. That was altered now; the hair was in light waves; the moustache reduced to propriety: Rose said she had made him presentable.
He was very cordial; had apparently forgotten old scores against Mr. St. John, and pressed the hospitality of his house upon them as long as they were in Paris. Their frequent presence in it, he said, would complete the bliss of himself and his wife.
“Frederick,” exclaimed Georgina, thoughtfully, when they had returned to their hotel, “should you think the Baron ever loved Adeline as he does Rose? He is evidently very fond of her.”
“Perhaps he did not. His intended marriage with Adeline was a contract; with Rose he had time to fall in love.”
“And — perhaps — you never loved her so very, very deeply!” timidly rejoined Georgina, raising to him her grey-blue eyes.”
“I must say one thing,” he answered, smiling; “that if a certain young lady of my particular acquaintance is not satisfied with her husband’s love—”
She did not let him go on; she threw herself into his sheltering arms, the tears of emotion falling from her eyes.
“Oh, my husband, my darling; you know, you know! I think you must have loved me a little all through; even when we used to quarrel at Westerbury.”
“I think I did, Georgina. Of one fact you may be very sure, that I would not exchange my wife for any other, living or dead. I hope, I believe, under Heaven’s blessing, that I may so love her to the end.”
“Amen,” softly breathed Georgina.
THE END
ROLAND YORKE
A SEQUEL TO THE CHANNINGS
This sequel to The Channings appeared in 1869. It was first serialised in The Argosy, a periodical that Ellen Wood bought in 1867 and edited until her death in 1887. The periodical specialised in sensational fiction of a milder sort (thus making it acceptable to a middle-class reading public) and carried most of Wood’s later fiction. This was the second of her novels to be serialised in the Argosy, the first being Anne Hereford, which began to appear in December 1867.
Title page of the first edition
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
PART THE SECOND. THE STORY.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
PART THE SECOND.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
PART THE THIRD.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
The Argosy, the periodical in which the novel was first serialised
“And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’”
LONGFELLOW.
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
In the Moonlight.
THE scene of this Prologue to the story about to be written was a certain cathedral-town, of which most of you have heard before, and the time close upon midnight.
It was a warm night at the beginning of March. The air was calm and still; the bright moon was shedding her pure light with unusual brilliancy on the city, lying direct underneath her beams. On the pinnacles of the time-honoured cathedral; on the church-spire, whose tapering height has made itself a name; on the clustering roofs of houses; on the trees of what people are pleased to call the Park; on the river, silently winding its course along beneath the city walls; and on the white pavement of its streets: all were steeped in the soft and beautiful light of the Queen of Night.
Surely at that late hour people ought to have been asleep in their beds, and the town hushed to silence! Not so. A vast number of men — and women too, for the matter of that — were awake and abroad. At least, it looked a good number, stealing quietly in one direction along the principal street A few persons, comparatively speaking, assembled together by daylight, will look like a crowd at night. They went along for the most part in silence, one group glancing round at another, and being glanced at, back again: whether drawn out by curiosity, by sympathy, by example, all seemed very much as if they were half ashamed to be seen there.
Straight through the town, past the new law-courts, past the squares and the good houses built in more recent years, past the pavements and the worn highway, telling of a city’s bustle, into the open country, to where a churchyard abuts upon a side-road. A rural, not much frequented churchyard, dotted with old graves, its small, grey church standing in the middle. People were not buried there now. On one side of the churchyard, open to the side way, the boundary hedge had disappeared, partly through neglect. The entrance was on the other side, facing the city; and where was the use of raising up again the trodden-down hedge, destroyed gradually and in process of time by boys and girls at play? So, at least, argued the authorities — when they argued about it at all.
People were not buried there now: and yet a grave was being dug. At the remotest corner of this open side of the churchyard, so close to the consecrated ground that you could scarcely tell whether they were on it or off it, two men with torches were working at the nearly finished, shallow, hastily-made grave. A pathway, made perhaps of custom more than of plan, led right over it into the churchyard — if any careless person chose to enter it by so unorthodox a route — and the common side-road, wide enough to admit of carts and other vehicles, crossed it on the exact spot where the grave was being dug. So that a spectator might have said the grave’s destined occupant was to lie in a cross-road.
Up to this spot came the groups, winding round the front hedge silently, save from that inevitable hum which attends a number, their footsteps grating and shuffling on the still air. That there was some kind of reverence attaching to the feeling in general, was proved by the absence of all jokes and light words; it may be almost said by the absence of conversation altogether, for what little they said was spoken in whispers. The open space beyond the grave was a kind of common, stretching out into the country, so that there was room and to spare for these people to congregate around, without pressing inconveniently on the sides of the shallow grave. Not but what every soul went close to give a look in, taking a longer or shorter time in the gaze as curiosity was slow or quick to satisfy itself.
The men threw out the last spadeful, patted the sides well, and ascended to the level of earth. Not a minute too soon. As they stamped their feet, like men who have been in a cramped position, and put their tools away back, the clock of the old grey church struck twelve. It was a loud striker at all times; it sounded like a gong in the stillness of the night, and a movement ran through the startled spectators.
With the first stroke of the clock there came up a wayfarer. Some traveller who had missed his train at Bromsgrove, and had to walk the distance. He advanced with a jaunty though somewhat tired step along the highway, and did not discern the crowd until close upon them, for the road wound just there. To say that he was astonished would be saying little. He stood still, and stared, and rubbed his eyes, almost questioning whether the unusual scene could be real.
“What on earth’s the matter?” demanded he of some one near him. “What does it all mean?”
The man addressed turned at the question, and recognised the speaker for Mir. Richard Jones, an inhabitant of the town. At least he was nearly sure it was he, but he knew him by sight but sightly. If it was Mr. Jones, why this same crowd and commotion had to do with him, in one sense of the word. Its cause had a great deal to do with his home.
“Can’t you answer a body?” continued Mr. Jones, finding he got no reply.
“Hush!” breathed the other man. “Look there.”
Along the middle of the turnpike-road, on their way from the city, came eight men with measured and even tread, bearing a coffin on their shoulders. It was covered with what looked like a black cloth shawl, whose woollen fringe was clearly discernible in the moonlight. Mr. Jones had halted at the turning up to the churchyard, where he first saw the assembly of people; consequently the men bearing the coffin, whose heavy tread and otherwise silent presence seemed to exhale a kind of unpleasant thrill, passed round by Mr. Jones, nearly touching him.
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br /> “What is it?” he repeated in a few seconds, nearly wild to have his understanding enlightened.
“Don’t you see what it is? — a coffin. It’s going to be buried in that there cross grave up younder.”
“But who is in the coffin?”
“A gentleman who died by his own hand. The jury brought it in self-murder, and so he’s got to be put away without burial service.”
“Lawk a mercy!” exclaimed Mr. Jones, who though a light, shallow, unstable man, given to make impromptu excursions from his home and wife, and to spend too much money in doing it, was not on the whole a bad-hearted one. “Poor gentleman! Who was it?”
“One of them law men in wigs that come in to the ‘sizes.”
Mr. Jones might have asked more but for two reasons. The first was, that his neighbour moved away in the wake of those who were beginning to press forward to see as much as they could get to see of the closing ceremony; the next was, that in a young woman who just then walked past him, he recognised his wife’s sister. Again Mr. Jones rubbed his eyes, mentally questioning whether this second vision might be real. For she, Miss Rye, was a steady, good, superior young woman, not at all likely to come out of her home at midnight after a sight of any sort, whether it might be a burying or a wedding. Mr. Jones really doubted whether his sight and the moonlight had not played him false. The shortest way to solve this doubt would have been to accost the young woman, but while he had been wondering, she disappeared. In truth it was Miss Rye, and she had followed the coffin from whence it was brought, as a vast many more had followed it. Not mixing with them; walking apart and alone close to the houses, in the deep shade cast by their walls. She was a comely young woman of about seven-and-twenty, tall and fair, with steady blue eyes, good features, and a sensible countenance. In deep mourning for her mother, she wore on this night a black merino dress, soft and fine, and a black shawl trimmed with crape, that she held closely round her. But she had disappeared; and amidst so many Mr. Jones thought it would be useless to go looking for her.