A MEETING IN PARIS.
"I Wonder why I am kept a prisoner here?" exclaimed Georgina
Beauclerc.
She stood at the open French window of the Rectory drawing-room as she
said it, partly indoors, partly out, and her auditor was Frederick St.
John, who was coming along the gravel path, in the twilight of the
autumn evening, on his road from Castle Wafer. Georgina had happened
to walk over to the Rectory early in the afternoon, and a message
followed her from Sir Isaac, that she was not to go back to Castle
Wafer until sent for. The young lady was surprised, indignant, and
excessively curious. The message had arrived about three o'clock: it
was now very nearly dinner-time, and she was not released. The dean,
Mrs. Beauclerc, and their guest were at Lexington; consequently, Miss
Georgina had passed the hours by herself, and very dull they had been.
He came up, taking off his hat as he approached, as if he were warm
from fast walking. Georgina retreated inside the room, but waited for
him at the window.
"I have come to release you," he said, in answer to her question. "I
am glad you obeyed me, and stayed."
"Obeyed you! I obeyed Sir Isaac."
"It was I who sent the message, Georgina."
"I wish I had known that!" she exclaimed, after a breathless pause. "I
never should have stayed."
He laughed. "That's why I used Isaac's name. I thought you might not
be obedient to me."
"Obedient to you, indeed, Mr. St. John! I should think not. Things
would have come to a pretty pass!"
She tossed back her shapely head, to show her indignation. Mr. St.
John only laughed again.
"Are they all out, Georgina?"
"Yes, they are out, and I have been alone all these hours. I wonder
you don't take contrition to yourself."
"I wonder at it too."
"I should like to know the reason of my having been kept here? In all
the course of my experience I never met with so outrageous a thing."
"Your experience has been so long a one, Georgie!"
"Well, I am not going to be ridiculed. I shall go back to Castle
Wafer: perhaps Sir Isaac will be able to enlighten me. You can stay
behind here; they'll be home sometime."
She tied her bonnet, fastened her mantle--having stood in them all
the afternoon, momentarily expecting to be released, as he had called
it--and was hastening through the window. Frederick laid a detaining
hand upon her.
"Not yet, Georgina. I have come to stop your return to Castle Wafer."
"I thought you said you had come to release me!"
"I meant release you from suspense--to satisfy your curiosity, which
has, I suppose, been on the rack. You are not to come back to Castle
Wafer at all: we won't have you."
"You can let things alone," returned Georgina, throwing off her
bonnet. "But I think you might have told me before now--keeping me
with my things on all these hours!"
"I could not conveniently come before. Well, shall I relieve that
curiosity of yours?"
Again she threw up her face petulantly. "That's just as you like. I
don't care to hear it."
"You know you do care to hear it," he said. "But indeed,
Georgina"--and his half-mocking, half-tender tone changed to
seriousness--"it is a subject that I shrink from entering upon. Mrs.
Carleton is ill. That is the reason we are banishing you for the
present from Castle Wafer."
Georgina's mood changed also: the past one had been all make-believe,
not real.
"Ill! I am so sorry. Is it anything infectious?"
"I will tell you what it is, Georgina: it is insanity. That she was
not quite sane, I have suspected some little time; but this afternoon
she has become very much worse. She locked herself in her room, and
Mr. Pym was obliged to burst the door open, and now she is--very
excited indeed. Mr. Pym told me he feared some crisis was approaching.
This was just after she fastened herself in her room; and I sent that
message to you at once. Isaac agrees with me that you had better
remain at home tonight: Castle Wafer will not be a very sociable
place this evening; and we must respect Mrs. Darling's feelings."
"Oh, I see, I see!" impulsively interrupted Georgina, all her good
qualities in full play. "Of course it would not be right for strangers
to be there. Poor Mrs. Darling! But is it true, Frederick? _Insane!_"
"I fear so."
"Perhaps it is some temporary fever that will pass off?"
"Well--we must hope for the best. And now--will you regard this as a
confidential communication?"
"Yes, certainly; if you wish it."
"I think it is better to do so. She may recover; and in that case it
would be very sad for the report to have been spread abroad. I knew I
might trust you; otherwise I should not have spoken. We have had
secrets together before."
"Shall you not tell papa?"
"I shall tell him, because he knows of the matter already. No one
else. Should her malady be confirmed, of course it will become
generally known."
"Do you know, I thought you had bad news when I saw your face,"
resumed Georgina. "You looked so worn and anxious. But you have looked
so for some days past."
"Have I? I've been tired, I suppose, from want of sleep. I have not
been in bed for some nights. I have been, watching."
"Watching! Where?"
"In the corridor at home."
Georgina looked at him in surprise. "What were you watching for?"
"Oh--for ghosts."
"Please be serious. Do tell me what you mean. I don't understand you
in the least."
"It is so pleasant to share a secret that I think I must tell it you,
Georgina. You remember your nightmare?"
"My nightmare? Oh yes, when I fancied some one came into my room.
Well?"
"Well--I thought it just possible, that instead of a nightmare it
might have been reality. That Mrs. Carleton, in her restlessness, had
wandered out of her room. It was not an agreeable thought, so I have
watched every night since, lest there should be a repetition of it."
Georgina was as quick as lightning at catching an idea. "You were
afraid for me! You watched to take care of me!"
"Something of that sort. Did you lock your door as I desired?"
"Yes: all but one night, when I forgot to do it."
"Just so. Knowing what a forgetful, careless young lady I had to deal
with, I concluded that I must depend upon myself, instead of her. A
pretty thing, if Mrs. Carleton had run away with you!"
A few bright rays were perceptible in the western horizon, illumining
the twilight of the hitherto dull day. Georgina Beauclerc was gazing
straight out to them, a very conscious look in her face. Suddenly she
turned it to Mr. St. John.
"Will you tell me--had your words to me last evening, warning me not
to be abroad, anything to do with this?"
He nodded. "Suspecting Mrs. Carleton's malady, I did not know who
might be safe from her, who not: and I saw her in the grounds then."
"Last night?"
"Last night. She was close to you."
A moment's thought, which was a revelation to Georgina, and she drew
nearer to him with a start. "I see it all, Frederick. I remember what
you said about her jealousy: you have been protecting me."
"Trying to do it."
"How shall I thank you? And I have been so impertinent and cross!
Perhaps I owe even my life to you!"
"I have not done it for nothing, I can tell you, young lady. I have
been thinking of my repayment all through it."
He put his arm round her before she could get away, and drew her close
to him. His voice became low and tender; his face, bent to hers, was
radiant with persuasive eloquence.
"I told you last night that I thought I had saved you from a great
danger----"
"And you repaid yourself," interrupted Georgina, with a dash of her
native sauciness, and a glow on her blushing cheeks.
"No, I did not. I--don't know whether it's this watching after your
safety, or what else it may be; but I have arrived at the conviction,
that I shall have to take care of you for life. Georgina, we might
have known years ago that it would come to this."
"Known that! When you only hated me!"
"If I hated you then--which I did not--I love you now. I cannot part
with you. Georgina, my darling, I shall never part with you. I don't
think you would like to part with me."
Her heart beat as it had never beaten before in her life; her eyes
were blinded with tears. Joy so great as this had never been
foreshadowed, except in some rare dream. He kissed the tears away.
"But it cannot be that you love me," she whispered.
"I love you dearly; although I once told a friend of yours that I
would not marry Georgina Beauclerc though there were not another
English girl extant. He saw into the future, it may be also into my
heart, more clearly than I did."
"You said that? To a friend of mine! Who was it?"
"One who lies buried in the cloisters at Westerbury."
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.
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