THE FAIR AT ALNWICK.
In the long, straggling street, which chiefly comprised the village of
Alnwick, there was a break in the houses on the left-hand side. This
was filled up by the common, or waste land; it belonged to the lord of
the manor, and no one might build upon it. It was a wide, untidy piece
of ground, branching off into far-away corners and dells, which did
very well for harbouring trampers and gipsies. Once a year, for three
days in September, this common was delivered over to all the bustle
and confusion of a fair. Shows and booths, containing (if you could
believe them) the wonders of the world, living and dead; caravans;
drinking-tents; stalls for fruit, gingerbread, and penny trumpets; and
here shoals of pleasure-seekers reigned in triumph during those three
days. Sober shopkeepers, driven half wild with opposition drums and
horns, talked a great deal about "getting the nuisance done away
with;" but the populace generally believed that no man living could
put the threat into execution, except the lord of the manor: and _he_
could only do it by refusing the use of the ground. However that may
have been, the ground had not been refused yet, and the populace was
triumphant.
It was a bright September day, and the fair was in full glory; as far
as was consistent with the comparative quiet and respectability of the
first day. Things on that day were ordered with a due regard to
decorum: the music was kept within bounds, the bawling showmen were
subdued and persuasive, the ladies' dresses and dancing were gentility
itself. For on this first day the better families around would send
their children to the fair (some had been known to go to it
themselves), and ladies'-maids and butlers congregated there in great
force. The second and third days were given over to what these
domestics called the riff-raff.
The fair was in its full radiance on this fine September day. Drums
were beating, fifes were playing, pantaloons were shouting, ladies
were dancing, and rival showmen in scarlet and gold tunics were
shouting out their seductive attractions, when two respectable-looking
maid-servants, each in charge of a little boy, might have been
observed in the street, about to enter the enchanted regions. The
children were attired in black velvet, trimmed with crape, and their
straw hats had black ribbon round them. The younger, a lovely child
with a bright complexion and a mass of fair curls, looked nearly three
years old; the other was nearly five; not a pretty child, but his
countenance one of noble intelligence. An insignificant little fellow
enough in years and stature, this elder one; no one to look at: and
yet a great many people touched their hats to him, child though he
was, and that very fair was being held upon his own land; for he was
lord of the manor, and inheritor of Alnwick.
Benja and George had been wild to set off to it. Indeed, for a week
beforehand, from the raising of the first plank for the booths, it
could hardly be said that either servants or children for miles round
were in their sedate senses. Prance, however, was an exception. Prance
seemed to have no affinity with fairs; and she had drawn in her thin
lips in withering contempt at Honour's open longing for it. There was
no more cordiality between the two servants than there used to be, and
a sharp quarrel would occur now and again, in which Honour, as far as
words went, had the best of it. Honour was free-spoken; there was no
denying it. This fair had caused a desperate quarrel that same
morning. Honour said everything she could to enhance its glories to
the children; Prance contradicted every word, and protested it was not
a fit place to take them to.
Mrs. Carleton St. John favoured Honour in the matter, told Prance she
would not deprive the children of the shows for anything, and finally
ordered her to be quiet. George took his nurse's part, and said Honour
was a "nasty beast." Benja retaliated that Prance was, and George
struck him. Mrs. Carleton St. John for once reproved George, and
kissed and soothed Benja. It was a curious thing, not noticed at the
time, but recalled by Honour in the future, that this little
graciousness on the part of her mistress, this displayed affection for
Benja, should have occurred on the day afterwards characterized by the
unexpected visit of Mr. Isaac St. John. "As if it had been on
purpose!" Honour was wont to repeat to herself with a groan. However,
all this partisanship for herself and Benja only put her into a good
humour at the time; she could not see the future; and when they
started, after an early dinner, Honour was in a state of great
delight, satisfied with everything and every one.
Excepting, perhaps, with Prance. Prance showed no signs whatever of
her discomfiture, but followed to the fair with George, impassive and
silent as ever. As they were entering the bustle, and the little legs
already began to dance to the drums, and the charmed eyes caught the
first glimpse of the spangles and all the other enchantments, a dusty
travelling carriage-and-four came bowling down the street, and stopped
at the Bell Inn, which was situated opposite to the common. Such
travelling equipages had become sufficiently rare to be almost a
curiosity in the county, and both the maids turned to stare, utterly
unsuspicious that it contained one who, as guardian, had all power
over the heir of Alnwick.
The first show they entered (on the principle of keeping the best to
the last) was a very sober sort of affair, and purporting to be "An
Emporium of Foreign Curiosities." The admission was threepence, the
trumpet was loud, and the showman was magnificent both in person and
persuasion.
"I shall go into this," said Honour. "I should think _you_ needn't be
afraid of what you'd see inside," she added to Prance in tones, it
must be confessed, of aggravation. "There's no dancing here."
Prance's only answer was to draw down the corners of her thin lips and
walk off with George to a leviathan booth whose company were executing
a complicated quadrille before it. Honour paid her threepence,
disputed with the money-taker about admitting Benja for
three-halfpence, that functionary protesting that there was no
half-price for gentlemen's children, and went into the show.
Like many other shows, its interior did not realize the outward
promise. There was a crocodile in stone, and a few more dead wonders,
which Honour turned up her nose at, saying something about demanding
back her money: but Benja's attention had become riveted by the pretty
model of a church rising from the midst of green moss. It was white,
and its coloured windows were ingeniously shown up by means of a light
placed within it. It really was a pretty and conspicuous article in
the dark booth, and Benja could not be moved from it. How little did
Honour think that that sight was to exercise so terrible an influence
on the unconscious child!
"Come along," she said, rather impatiently. "I could make you as good
a one any day, Benja."
"How could you make it?" promptly asked Benja.
"With white paper and thin strips of wood for the frame. Master Benja,
then! we shall have Prance going home and telling your mamma that we
lost her on purpose. She's as deceitful as yonder crocodile."
"Couldn't you buy it for me, Honour?" returned Benja, not stirring a
peg.
"Of course I couldn't," answered Honour. "What a little simpleton you
must be, to ask it! The things here are not for sale; the folks get
their living by showing them. And a fine set of worthless rubbish it
is! Once for all, are you coming, Master St. John?"
"Will you promise to make me one?" persisted Benja.
"Yes, I will. There!"
"When?"
"As soon as I can get the things together. Now come."
Benja reluctantly moved away; but his head and eyes were turned for
the last glance, up to the moment when Honour pulled him through the
low green-baize opening.
Meanwhile Mrs. Carleton St. John was sitting alone. She was of
remarkably quiet habits by inclination, a great stay-at-home, rarely
seeking society or amusement abroad; and the still recent death of her
husband tended to keep the Hall pretty free from idle visitors. One
sole passion seemed to absorb her whole life, to the exclusion of
every other; it filled every crevice of her heart, it regulated her
movements, it buried even her natural grief for her husband--and this
was love for her child. The word love most inadequately expresses the
feeling: it was a passion, threatening to consume every healthy
impulse. She was quite aware of it: indeed, her conscience did not
allow her to be otherwise.
One thought was ever present to her; it may be said that it had never
left her mind since the day her husband died: that Benja was chief of
Alnwick Hall, with all its wealth and dignity; that she, Charlotte St.
John, so arrogant by nature, was there only on sufferance, a home
accorded to her as his personal guardian; and that George was as
nobody. They were as a sharp thorn, these reflections, ever piercing
her. They ate into her ill-regulated heart and rankled there. And they
went on to another thought, an unwholesome thought, which would have
been a wicked thought but that it was not there of her own will: a
thought that carried danger in its train. In the first waking of early
morning, in the fevered dreams of midnight solitude, in the glare and
bustle of noonday, it was ever thrusting itself forward--if Benja were
to die, her child would be the inheritor.
Was she aware of its danger? No. And yet she was fond of tracing it
back to its original source--the accident to Benja. When the boy was
taken out of the water, drowned as was supposed, and a some one
called out, the wild beating of Mrs. St. John's bosom--_not with
sorrow_--called into life the thought that had certainly never existed
there before, or else had lain dormant.
Her increasing dislike of Benja should have acted as a warning to her.
It was generated by the false view she took of the existing state of
things: that Benja was a sort of ogre, whose sole mission on earth was
to stand in the light of her child and deprive him of what might have
been his birthright. She strove against this dislike--it might be
better to call it hatred, for it had grown into that--and she had to
exercise a constant check upon herself in her behaviour towards him.
None but she knew what it cost her to treat Benja with a semblance of
love, or to make no very apparent difference between the children. She
did strive against it--let us do her justice!--not from any suspicion
of danger, but from her own sense of equity. That very morning, in
taking Benja's part and kissing him, she had acted from an impulse of
good principle, an endeavour to do right. But no sooner were the
children out of her sight, than the old bad feelings got the better of
her, and she sat indulging all sorts of foolish dreams and visions of
what she would do were Alnwick George's instead of Benja's. Will you
believe that she had fallen into the habit of repeating their
Christian names to herself, with the prospective title before them?
"Sir Benjamin St. John," "Sir George St. John;" and she thought the
one (you need not ask which of the two) sounded a thousand times more
charming than the other.
Though very conscious of all this, she yet detected no danger in it.
The night of her husband's death, she made a resolve to do her duty by
her little stepson; and when the codicil to the will was read, giving
Mr. St. John of Castle Wafer the power to remove him from her, she
resented it bitterly as a mark of want of confidence in her shown by
her husband. No woman could have been more willing in intention to do
right by a stepson than Charlotte St. John. If only her strength of
will did not fail her, she might succeed. One result of the desire to
carry out her resolve, was retaining Honour in her service. She very
much disliked the girl, for her strong attachment to Benja in
contradistinction to George, and her always taking his part against
that rather capricious younger gentleman; but she would not discharge
her. To this desire to do her duty, rather than because her husband in
dying had expressed a wish that Honour should be retained about Benja,
the girl owed the fact that she was still in her place. Honour alone
of the servants, save and except perhaps Prance, had detected all
along the second Mrs. St. John's dislike to her little charge. She was
aware, as surely as though she had seen it recorded, that her mistress
regarded George as he who ought to be the heir, Benja as a usurper;
and it aroused within her a feeling of indignation, which sometimes
peeped out in her manner. Not sufficiently so for Mrs. St. John openly
to find fault with; and she only thought the girl quick in temper. And
now I think I have said as much as I can say about the state of mind
of Mrs. Carleton St. John. She deliberately intended to do right: but
passion and prejudice are strong; unusually strong were they in her;
and her mind was undisciplined and ill-regulated.
As she sat there today, the approach of a vehicle in the avenue
attracted her attention. She soon saw that it was a fly from the Bell
Inn, and all her motherly fears were at once up in arms, lest any
accident had happened to Georgy, and he was being brought home, or she
fetched to him. But it seemed to contain only one gentleman; and he a
stranger; a delicate-looking man, who sat low in the fly.
Not for a long time had she been so surprised as when the card was
brought to her, and she found that her visitor was Mr. St. John of
Castle Wafer. Had he come to remove Benja? The thought awoke a
momentary affection for the child in her heart, and called up a
resentful flush to her cheeks. But resentment faded away as Isaac came
in, and held out his hand to her in his open courtesy. She saw she had
nothing underhand to fear from him.
What was perhaps more agreeable to her, as it is to all vain
women--and Charlotte St. John was one of them--was the look of honest
admiration that shone out of Isaac's face and manner. She presented a
picture deeply interesting--in her young widowhood, in her beauty, in
her manner so quiet and subdued. She burst into tears as they talked
of her husband, of Benja; and she told Mr. St. John that if he removed
Benja from her it would break her heart.
It was only a figure of speech. And it is very probable that the fact
of two thousand a-year of her income being in peril, may have swayed
her to earnestness more than any other feeling. Mr. St. John took it
all for loving earnestness, and assured her he thought no cause would
ever be likely to arise for his removing Benja. In point of fact,
Isaac St. John was most warmly impressed in her favour; it was almost
as if she had fascinated him.
"Will you answer me a question?" asked Mrs. St. John. "I cannot get it
solved by any one else. Why did my husband leave this power in your
hands? Did he doubt me?"
"I do not know why he left it," was the answer of Mr. St. John:
"unless he thought that you might be too kind to the boy--might
indulge him to his detriment. I remember, too, his saying that you
were not very strong, and the charge of the two children might be a
tax upon you."
She did not answer. She began to speak of more general things, and
Isaac St. John sat talking with her for some time. She expressed her
regret that Benja should happen to be at the fair, and laughed when
Mr. St. John spoke of the noise that had assailed his ears from the
drums. She pressed him to take up his quarters at the Hall until the
morrow, but this he declined; he was only an invalid at best, he said.
He had engaged rooms at the Bell for himself and his servant, and he
invited Benja to come and breakfast with him on the following morning.
Mrs. St. John readily assented to the invitation.
"You will allow his nurse to attend him," he said to her, as he rose
to leave. "I should like to see and converse with the attendant of my
little ward, and offer her a gratuity as an earnest of my favour."
As readily as the other request was this acceded to, and Mr. St. John
departed, taking final leave of his cousin's widow--for he intended to
leave Alnwick soon after breakfast the following morning.
The fly had conveyed him almost through the park on his return to the
Bell, when he saw two women-servants, in charge of two children.
Rightly guessing who they were, he stopped the fly, opened the door,
and talked to them from his seat.
A noble boy, his ward, with an open, intelligent countenance; a pretty
little toy-boy the other, with his bright face, his fair curls, and
his indulged petulance peeping out even then. The children were at
home with him at once, showing him the fairings they carried--one a
child's kaleidoscope, the other a drum. Benja told him some
unintelligible story of a "church" Honour was going to make for him;
Georgy sounded the rataplan on his drum. He inquired of Honour whether
she was the nurse mentioned to him by her late master, who had been
with the child from his birth. Upon her saying she was, he told her
she was to be at the Bell with Master St. John the next morning at
nine o'clock; he handed a sovereign to Prance; he won the boys' hearts
by a promise of a whole cargo of fairings to be sent up that evening;
and then he drove on. Not one of them had noticed his hump; but they
thought what a little low gentleman he was in stature.
Benja had taken home a fairing for his mamma--a blue-and-white
smelling-bottle, flat as a half-crown, with a narrow neck in which was
a little cork as stopper. It had cost threepence, and he kissed her as
he gave it to her. George's fairing to his mamma had been a Banbury
cake, but he had unfortunately eaten it on his way home. Whether the
contrast touched her, or that with Mr. St. John in the vicinity she
did not choose to be otherwise than loving, certain it was that she
kissed Benja heartily in return, praised his present as she put it
into her waistband, and told Georgy he was a selfish little fellow.
How gratified Honour was, and how, in manner, she crowed over Prance,
Prance would not condescend to observe. Mrs. St. John was all
graciousness, bade Honour make Master Benja very nice indeed for the
following morning, and said the pony-carriage should take them down.
The appointment was kept. Benja was treated to jam and other good
things as he sat at breakfast with Mr. St. John--Brumm and Honour
waiting on them. Afterwards, when the cloth was removed, Mr. Brumm had
orders to take Master St. John to the fair and show him the elephant,
or anything else Mr. Brumm might deem expedient; and Honour was
requested to take a seat while Mr. St. John talked to her.
He really saw no means of ascertaining whether Benja was well done by
at the Hall, excepting this--the putting a direct question to the
nurse. After what he had seen of the Hall's mistress the previous day,
he would as soon suspect himself of being ill treated, as any child
over whom she had control. Still it was as well to make sure upon the
point.
Honour answered his questions as straightforwardly as she could. But,
it should be remarked, that in her present mood of graciousness
towards her mistress (or it should perhaps rather be said of that
lady's graciousness to her), she spoke more favourably of Mrs. St.
John than she would have done at almost any previous time. She was not
indulgent to Master Benja; but on the other hand she was not generally
unkind to him, was the substance of her answer.
This rather surprised Mr. St. John. "I should have thought her in
danger of being too kind," he said.
Honour shook her head. "Mrs. St. John is too kind by a great deal to
her own child, sir; she indulges him dreadfully; but there's no fear
that she will ever do that by Master Benja."
"I suppose you do not mean to say that Mrs. St. John is unkind to
him?" returned Mr. St. John, rather at a loss how to frame his words
with a due regard to what was due to the dignity of that lady, when
speaking of her to her servant.
"Well, no, sir, I can't say that she is unkind. She treats the two
very much alike, only that she is always kissing and clasping the
little one, and has him so much more with her. She boxed Master
Benja's ears the other day and made him cry. For no fault, either,
that I could find out."
Mr. St. John smiled. "A little wholesome correction is good for boys,
you know."
"I'm not saying that it isn't, sir. Altogether, things have gone on
much more comfortably since my master's death than I used to fancy
they would. There's not much to complain of."
"On the whole, then, you cannot see cause for any interference on my
part? You see no reason why Master St. John should not remain at the
Hall under his stepmother's charge?"
"No, sir; I cannot say that I do. And of course I am always with him,
and can take care of him there as well as I could anywhere else. I
shall never let harm come nigh him from any one."
It was conclusive, and Mr. St. John intimated that the conference was
over.
"You see, I speak to you as the confidential attendant of the child,"
he said. "You were named to me by your late master as one in whom
every confidence might be placed. Do me the favour to regard what I
have said as between ourselves, in the interest of this little orphan.
And always remember, that in case of any emergency arising, where
any--any counsel, or advice, or interference on my part should be
desirable, a letter will find me at Castle Wafer. I shall come over
from time to time--not often, for my health does not permit it; and I
shall hope to have a letter frequently from the little boy."
He pressed a very handsome present into her hand as he concluded,
saying it was in recompense of her trouble and attention to the child.
Honour's eyes filled with tears as she took it; it needed not money to
enhance her jealous love for Benja.
And the boy came back with Mr. Brumm in a state of ecstatic delight,
for he had seen the elephant and everything else. He was despatched to
the Hall with Honour, bearing compliments to its mistress, and a cargo
of good things for himself and Georgy. And Mr. St. John set off on his
homeward journey to Castle Wafer.