Chapter XXXI: Unavailing Repentance

Rose Darling struggled out of the room with Mr. St. John: not caring to remain in it, possibly, without his sheltering presence. They went downstairs with the crowd--all silent and well-behaved, but still a crowd--and then Rose drew him into the small snug room that had been her abiding place and Mary's for the day.

Mr. St. John sat down, and leaned his head upon his hand. In a shock like this, he could not make believe not to feel it, or to gloss it over; indeed he was an independent man at all times, utterly refusing to give in to the false artificialities of society. Rose slipped away, and brought him a glass of wine; but he shook his head, declining to take it. Mary Carr had not come with them; it turned out afterwards that she thought he had left the house.

"When did she die?" was the first question he presently asked.

"Last night; a few minutes before twelve."

"Just as I was stepping on board the steamer at Folkestone," he murmured to himself. "Why is she--_there_, Rose?--dressed--in that form? Are they mad?"

"It is a custom they have in France, as it seems; but I had never before heard of it," answered Rose. "Hark at the people passing up still!"

A shiver of remembrance took him, but it was conquered immediately. Rose untied the black string of her straw bonnet, and put it on the table.

"I suppose we are both in mourning for the same person," she remarked, in allusion to the narrow band of crape on his hat: "little George St. John."

"Yes," he shortly answered. "What did she die of?"

"Of consumption: at least, that is what the doctors would tell you. I won't say anything about a broken heart." Mr. St. John made no reply. Rose resumed: "From the moment that blood-vessel burst, there has been, I suppose, no real hope, no possibility of cure. But she rallied so greatly, and seemed so well, that I, for one, believed in it." He looked at Rose; the words seemed to arouse his curiosity. "When did she burst a blood-vessel?"

"It was at Beaufoy. It was--why, yes, it was the very day you were last there, Mr. St. John, almost in your sight. You remember the morning you quitted the house, and never came back again?--did you notice Adeline running down the steps of the colonnade after you, imploring you to stop?--did you notice that she sank down on the grass, as if from fatigue?"

"I think I did," he answered, in allusion to the last question. "I know she followed me down the steps."

"It was then the blood-vessel broke; through emotion, no doubt. Had you but looked back once again, you might have seen what was amiss. I never shall forget the sight. Just at first I had thought her foot slipped and threw her down, next I thought she was kneeling for a joke: but when I reached her, I saw what it was. One minute longer, and you would have seen the whole house gathered round her on the lawn. She was got indoors, and the doctors were sent for. What a house it was! She thought she was dying; and I believe the chiefest wish of her heart then was to see you."

"Why did you not send for me?"

"We did send. I wrote to you, and Louise took the note at once to the Lodge. But you had already gone--turning Madame Baret's brains upside down with the shock."

"You might have sent it after me to England."

"Of course I might--if I had only known you were gone to England. How was I to know it? I might be wishing to get a note to some one in the moon, but not see my way clear to writing the address. It was weeks, and weeks, and weeks, Mr. St. John, before we ever heard a syllable of you, whether you were in England or in any other part of the known world, or whether you were at the bottom of the sea."

"And she never married de la Chasse?"

The words seemed spoken as a remark, not as a question. Rose, who seemed to have a touch of one of her ironical moods coming on, answered it:

"Would you have had her marry him when death had set in? After the doctors had met that day, it was known throughout the house that nothing could save her. At least, they said so. The old malady of the spring had but been lying dormant; it was in her still; and the terrible trouble she went through had brought it forth again. Under the very happiest circumstances, had she married you, even--and I suppose that might have been _her_ idea of happiness," added Rose, satirically--"she could not have lived long. De la Chasse saw her for a few minutes on the day they were to have been married, and expressed himself very much concerned, and all that, as a matter of course; I don't suppose he broke his heart over it."

"And she has been ill ever since?"

"Ever since. The disease has fluctuated, as you may imagine; some weeks she would be at death's door, some weeks comparatively well; but it has all the while been progressing on gradually to the ending. Frederick St. John"--and Rose stepped up to him in her excitement--"I don't believe you were ever absent for one minute from her mind; by day and by night it was filled with that miserable love for you; and the yearning wish, destined not to be gratified, was ever upon her--that you would come and see her before she died."

"_Why_ did you not let me know it?--why could you not have written to me?" he asked, in a sharp tone of pain.

"For one thing, I tell you, I did not know where to write. For another, Adeline would not have let me. She had an idea that you did not care to come to her--that you perhaps would not, if summoned. And I"--Rose paused a moment, and angrily compressed her repentant lips--"I could wish my tongue had been bitten out for a share I took in the past. There's not the least doubt that one ingredient in Adeline's cup of bitterness was worse than all the rest--the thought of Sarah Beauclerc."

He uttered an exclamation.

"And of your love for her. And I say I wish Sarah Beauclerc had been smothered, and I with her, if you like, before I had ever breathed her name to Adeline. But for that, but for deeming that she was your true love, and would some time be your wife, Adeline would have sent to the far ends of the earth after you for a parting interview."

He sat, leaning his head upon his fingers, looking into the fire.

"What a miserable business it seems altogether! Nothing but cross-purposes, the one with the other. Sarah Beauclerc!"

"Are you still engaged--perhaps at a moment like this I may be pardoned for asking it--to Sarah Beauclerc?"

"I never was engaged to Sarah Beauclerc. I had once a sort of passing fancy for her; I don't know that it was more. I have had no thought of her, or of any one else, since I parted from Adeline."

"In a letter I had from London, not very long ago," resumed Rose, slowly, "your name was coupled with Miss Sarah Beauclerc's. It said you were her shadow."

"Who said it?"

"Never mind. It was a lady."

"Your correspondent laboured under a mistake, Rose; you may tell her so, for her satisfaction. Sarah Beauclerc will very soon be a wife, but not mine."

"Who is she going to marry?"

"Lord Raynor."

Rose exhausted her surprise in ejaculations. She had thought Sarah Beauclerc would be Frederick St. John's chosen wife; had felt utterly certain of it in her own mind. He sat in silence, never heeding her. Remembrances of the past were crowding upon him. That he had been very near loving Sarah Beauclerc, was indisputable: and but for the meeting with Adeline, this might have come to fruition: there was no knowing now. At Lady Revel's--the evening spoken of to Rose by Miss Mary Anne Darling--he had learnt that she, Sarah, was going to be married to the Viscount Raynor, a man who, as Captain Budd, had been attached to her for years. She herself told him of this. In her calm, cold, cutting manner, she spoke of _his_ contemplated marriage to Mademoiselle de Castella: was any covert reproof intended in this? any secret intimation that _that_ justified her own engagement? However that might be, all chance of their being one in this world, had any such chance ever existed, was at an end; and Frederick St. John had no regret left in regard to it. All his regrets were for another.

"If Adeline had but known it!" murmured Rose, genuine tears of vexation filling her eyes. "Did you not know she was dying, Mr. St. John?"

"No. I knew nothing about her."

"Have you been in England ever since you quitted us that day?"

"I went straight to London from Beaufoy, saw my brother Isaac, explained matters to him, and then accompanied him to Castle Wafer. Subsequently I went to Scotland, deer-stalking; running over once to London from thence, to see my mother. Before Christmas, I was again for a week in London, and then I escorted my mother to Castle Wafer. Now you know what my movements have been, Rose. I heard nothing of Adeline."

"Perhaps you kept yourself out of the way of hearing of her?"

"I did."

"That was your temper!"

"Just so. Our faults generally bring their own punishment."

"We heard you were in an awful passion at Madame Baret's," remarked Rose, who plunged into things irrelevant without mercy.

"I thought I had cause to be. I thought so then. I do not know the reason now why she rejected me."

"Mary Carr will tell you that. Ill-fated Adeline! She would have given her poor life to have been allowed to whisper it to you then, to justify herself in your eyes. The fact is," added Rose, after a pause, "the Church interfered to prevent the marriage, and Adeline was sworn to silence on the crucifix. _I_ did not know it until today. She thought of you until the last, Mr. St. John, and in her dying moments got permission from her father for the truth to be disclosed to you. Mary was charged with it."

Mr. St. John's eyes blazed up with an angry light. "Then I know that was the work of Father Marc!"

"I dare say it was. He was very fond of Adeline, and no doubt thought her marriage with a heretic would be perdition here and hereafter. I don't see that you can blame him: you would have done the same in his place, had you been true to your creed. Father Marc's one of the best gossipers living. We saw a great deal of him in Adeline's sick-room, after you left. I fell in love with the charming old père."

Would she ever be serious! The question might have crossed Mr. St. John at a less bitter moment.

"And I think his gossip did Adeline good," continued Rose. "It was a sort of break to her misery. How could you have doubted her--have doubted for a single moment, whatever your passionate rage might have been, that her whole love was yours?"

How indeed? But perhaps in his inmost heart he never had doubted it. He sat there now, bearing the bitter weight of remembrance as he best might, his eyes looking back into the past, his delicate lips drawn in to pain.

"They have no portrait of her," went on Rose, not in her mercilessness, but in her giddy, gossiping lightness. "And the one you took of her, you defaced."

"Don't, Rose!"

The words came from him with a wail. His remorse wanted no feeding; it was already as great as he well knew how to bear. Rose was not quite without feeling, and the words and their tone checked her. She sat thinking how unkind she had been, and began flirting the strings of her bonnet about, as it lay near her on the table.

But it was not in her nature to remain silent long. Something, perhaps the black ribbon, took her thoughts to another subject: and in truth she did not like to say more of Adeline.

"Does it not seem like a fatality? All three of them to have died, one after the other!"

Mr. St. John came slowly out of his pain, and looked at her for an explanation. "Three of whom?"

"Oh, I was thinking of Alnwick. Mr. Carleton St. John first and then his two boys. I suppose you have inherited?"

"My brother has. Yes, it is a very sad thing. Quite a fatality, as you say."

"What fortune has Charlotte now? Much?"

"I really do not know. I fear not much."

"She reckoned so surely--I know she did--upon being Lady St. John!"

"That seems to be a chief portion of life's business, I think," he remarked: "the reckoning upon things that never come to pass."

"I suppose you have not seen her since?"

"Mrs. Carleton St. John? Yes, I have. I heard she was staying with Mrs. Darling in town, the week I spent there before Christmas, and I called."

"How was she looking? How did she seem?" asked Rose, rather eagerly.

"She seemed quite well, and she looked well. Very thin: but in good health and spirits."

"There was no--excitement in her manner, was there?"

"On the contrary. She struck me as being one of the calmest, quietest-mannered women I ever saw."

"Did you think her pretty?"

"No. I thought her handsome."

"What did mamma say to you about me?--and Margaret and Mary Anne? No good, I know. They are always abusing me."

"I did not see them. Mrs. Carleton St. John said they had all gone out to call on some old friend."

"You had no loss. Mamma you know; I don't say anything against her, though it was a shame of her to keep me at school so long; but Mary Anne and Margaret are the primmest old creatures you can picture. Why, they are going on for thirty! I sent them over a cap apiece the other day, in return for a little interference of theirs. Lottie Singleton took the parcel. Didn't it make them wild!"

A faint smile parted his lips.

"Where is Charlotte going to live?" resumed Rose. "Have you heard?"

"I have heard nothing. I believe my brother wrote to beg of her to go back to Alnwick, and remain there as long as she chose. But she declined."

"I know one thing--that I hope she'll not live with us," cried Rose, tossing back her golden curls. "Charlotte always was so domineering, and now--especially---- You are _sure_ you observed no undue excitement of manner?" she broke off, after a pause.

"Why do you ask it? To me she appeared to be almost unnaturally calm."

"I think I'll tell you why," said thoughtless Rose. And forthwith she disclosed to Mr. St. John all she had heard from Nurse Brayford. It was lamentably imprudent of her, without doubt; but she meant no harm. And the notion she herself had gathered from the story was, that the trouble had temporarily touched Charlotte's brain, just as a passing fever will touch it. That was all the real thought of her heart; but her expressions were exaggerated as usual, meaning less than they implied. It had the effect of fully arousing Frederick St. John from his own care: and Rose was surprised to see him make so much of it.

"That Charlotte--that your sister at the time of the child's death was _mad!_" he repeated. "Surely not, Rose!"

"It was nothing less. How else could she fancy she saw all sorts of visions of the child? Not her child; I don't mean him: the little heir, Benja. He was always walking before her with the lighted toy, the church; the one that caused his death, you know. She had awful fits of this terror, frightening Georgy nearly to death."

Mr. St. John made no reply. His eyes were fixed on Rose, and he was revolving what she said.

"It was Mrs. Brayford told me this; the nurse who was with Adeline in the spring. You heard that she had gone from Belport with Mrs. Carleton St. John to watch George. But I don't think the woman told me quite all," added Rose, casting her thoughts back: "she seemed to reserve something. At least, so it struck me."

"It must have been a sort of brain fever," remarked Mr. St. John.

"It must have been downright madness," returned Rose. "They hold a curious custom, it seems, in one of the towns of France: on St. Martin's Eve every one turns out at night with horns and lighted paper lanterns, which they parade about the streets for a couple of hours. It happened that Charlotte was there this very night: she had gone to the town to take the steamer for London. The lanterns were of various forms and devices, many of them being churches; and Charlotte was in her room when the show began, and saw it all. She had a sort of fit from terror," continued Rose in a whisper. "She was quite mad when she came to, fancying it was a thousand Benjas coming after her to torment her. Prance had always locked Brayford out of the room before, when these attacks came on; but she couldn't do it that night, for Charlotte had to be held; she was raving."

"It is very strange," said Mr. St. John.

"That is why I asked you whether you saw anything unusual in her manner,--any excitement. Of course I can't write and ask; I can't hint at it. They _say_ Charlotte is well, but if she were not I know they would never tell me, and I like to be at the top and bottom of everything. I'm mamma's true daughter for that."

"Rose, I wish you had not told me this."

"Why?" exclaimed Rose, opening her eyes very wide.

He seemed to have spoken involuntarily. The retort and its surprised tone woke him from his dream, and all his senses were in full play again.

"It is not pleasant to hear of women suffering. I can't bear it. Your sister must have gone through a great deal."

"Oh, poor thing, yes she must. I'll not call her hard names again. And I do hope and trust the brain trouble has really left her." /

"She seemed quite well. I saw no trace whatever of the mind's being affected. It must have been a sort of temporary fever. Rose, were I you, I think I would never talk of this."

"I don't. I only said it to you. I assure you I wouldn't say a word of it to mamma to be made Empress tomorrow. She'd box my ears for me, as she used to do when I was a little girl."

Mr. St. John rose to leave. "There's nothing more you have to say, Rose?"

She knew as well as he that he alluded to Adeline. "There was nothing more, just then," she answered. "Mary Carr would, no doubt, see him later."

He shook hands with Rose and was leaving the room, when Miss Carr came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"I thought you had gone," she said. "Will you come with me and see old Madame de Beaufoy? I was in her room just now, and told her you had been here; she thought I ought to have taken you up to her; and she cried when she said how great a favourite you had been in those happy days, now gone by for ever."

With some hesitation--for he did not care to see the family again, especially on that day--Mr. St. John suffered himself to be conducted to her room. The show people were still silently jostling each other on the staircase, passing up and down it.

Madame de Beaufoy was in her chamber: it is the custom you know to receive visitors in the bed-chambers in France: a handsomely furnished room, the counterpane a blue satin, richly quilted, and the large square pillows, lying on it, of the finest cambric edged with choice Mechlin lace. As she held Mr. St. John's hand in greeting and drew him to the fire, the tears coursed freely down the fine old face.

"Ah, my friend, my friend!" she said, speaking in English, "if they had but suffered her to marry you, she might not be lying low this day. A hundred times I have said to Maria, that she should not have been severed from Frederick St. John. But Maria, poor thing, had no hand in it; she is not a dévote; it was the Church that did it. And we must suppose all's for the best, though it sacrificed her."

No tears shone in his eyes, his grief was too deep for that. It could be read in every line of his face, of his rigid features.

"I wish to Heaven things had been allowed to take a different course," he answered in low tones. "But they tell me that no care, no amount of happiness could have saved her."

"Tush!" returned the old lady. "The greatest mistake they made was in not taking her to a warmer climate while they had the opportunity. Had that been done, and had you been allowed to marry her, she might have enjoyed years of life. I don't say she could have lived to be old: they insist upon it that she could not: but she would have had some enjoyment of this world, poor child, and not have been cut off from it, as she is now."

The thought crossed him--and it came in spite of his regrets, and he could not help it--that all things might still be for the best. Had she lived to bear him children--and to entail upon them her fragility of constitution----

"You did love her, Mr. St. John."

"With my whole heart and soul."

"Ay, ay; and she was bound up in you, I don't see why you should have been parted--and we all liked you. For my part," continued the tolerant old lady--"but you know it doesn't do to avow such sentiments to the world--I think one religion is as good as another, provided people do their duty in it. She had as sure a chance of going to heaven as your wife, as she had if she had married that de la Chasse, whom I never liked."

"Indeed I trust so."

"I became a Roman Catholic to please my husband and his family, but I was just as near to heaven when I was a Protestant. And I say that Adeline need not have been sacrificed. You have been in to see her, I hear."

"Yes. Not knowing what I was going to see."

"Was ever such a barbarous custom heard of! But Maria would listen to no sort of reason: and Agnes upheld her. I wonder the Signor allowed it. They will not get me in. I shall see the dear lost one in her coffin tonight; but I will not see her the actor in all that mummery."

The old lady was interrupted by the entrance of Madame de Castella. She did not know St. John was there; and her first surprised movement was that of retreat. But a different feeling came over her, and she stepped forward sobbing, holding out both her hands.

A few broken sentences of mutual sorrow, and then the scene became disagreeably painful to Mr. St. John. Madame de Castella's sobs were loud and hysterical, her mother's tears rained down quietly. He took his leave almost in silence.

"Would you like to attend the funeral?" asked the old lady. "It takes place tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" he echoed: the haste striking upon his English ideas as unseemly.

"Tomorrow at eleven."

"Perhaps Mr. St. John would not like it?" interposed Madame de Castella between her sobs. "The Baron de la Chasse is coming for it."

"And what if he is!" cried her mother. "Surely their animosities must have ended now. Be here a quarter before eleven, my friend, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see the last of her."

Ah yes, all animosities had ended then, and St. John did not fail to be there. It was one of the grandest funerals ever seen in Belport. Amidst the long line of priests was Father Marc: and he recognized St. John and saluted him courteously and cordially, as if entirely oblivious of the past, and of the share he had taken in it. Signor de Castella walked bareheaded after the coffin; de la Chasse and another near friend were next. St. John was lost amid the crowd of followers, and his companion was Monsieur le Comte le Coq de Monty.

"So happy to have the honour of meeting you again, though it is upon this melancholy occasion!" cried the Comte, who was very fond of talking and had hastened to fasten himself on Mr. St. John. "What a sad thing that consumption is! And de la Chasse is here! How he must feel her loss! the engaging, beautiful demoiselle that she was!"

The procession moved on. To the church first, and then to the grave. But amidst all its pomp and show, amidst the tall candles, the glittering crucifixes, the banners of silver and black, amidst the array of priests and their imposing vestments; through the low murmurs of their soothing chant, lost in the echoes of the streets; even beyond that one dark mass, the chief feature of the pageant, borne by eight men with measured tread, through his regrets for what was in it--his buried love--there came something else, totally foreign to all this, and uncalled for by will, floating through the mind of Mr. St. John.

The curious tale whispered to him by Rose Darling the previous day, touching the fancies of Mrs. Carleton St. John, was connecting itself, in a haunting fashion, with certain words he had heard dropped by Honour at Castle Wafer.