Chapter 3

THE UNEXPLAINED REASON.

Not a word was spoken by either mother or daughter as they entered their home. The little French clock in the drawing-room pointed to eleven--for the festivities at the Hall had been prolonged into evening--and Charlotte, perhaps afraid of further contention, said good night, and went up at once to her chamber. Mrs. Darling threw off her cloak and bonnet and began to pace the room. It was rather a habit of hers when disturbed or vexed.

Never had she been so disturbed as now. Her ordinary crosses had been but light ones, which she scolded or talked away; _this_ seemed to be too deep, too real, for any talking.

It might be unreasonable; every one who knew of it said it was so; but Mrs. Darling had lived in the ardent hope that her eldest daughter--more fondly cherished by her than all the rest--would never leave her, never marry. She had planned and schemed against it. Some two or three years ago, a suspicion arose in her mind that Charlotte was falling in love with George St. John, and she checked it by carrying off Charlotte, and keeping her away until the danger was over. He had married Caroline Carleton before they came back again. No one living had suspected this manoeuvre on the mother's part, or that Charlotte had been in danger of loving the master of Alnwick--if she had not loved him--except Margaret Darling. Surely it must have been unreasonable. Mr. St. John was a free man then in every sense of the word, and Charlotte's son, had she married him and borne one, would have been the heir!

That Mrs. Darling's love for Charlotte had always been inordinate, those about them knew. But, as a woman of the world, she might have foreseen how utterly powerless would be a mother's love to keep her daughter always by her side. Charlotte once said to her in a joking way, that she had better put her into a convent, and make a nun of her: and indeed that would have been about the only way of preventing it. And now, in spite of her precaution, Charlotte was about to marry; to be a second wife. That fact alone brought some gall to Mrs. Darling.

She had deemed Charlotte so secure. She had never dreamt of the treason that was afloat. Their visit to her old mother in Berkshire had been prolonged until June, and all that time Charlotte had been safe under her own eye. In June, old Mrs. Darling (it was the same name, for Mrs. Darling's second husband had been a distant cousin) grew so convalescent that they had no scruple in quitting her; and Mrs. Darling had despatched Charlotte to Alnwick under convoy of Mary Anne, who was so much older than her years, and might be thoroughly trusted. Margaret remained behind with her grandmother, and Mrs. Darling went to France to see her youngest daughter Rose, who was at school there. She only intended to be absent a fortnight; by the end of that time she meant to be at Alnwick; but ere it was concluded, she was summoned back in haste to her old mother, who had had a relapse. So that it was September before Mrs. Darling really returned to Alnwick. She arrived just in time to attend the fête at Mr. St. John's, and she went to it without any more prevision of what was to happen than a child unborn.

It was the first time that Charlotte had been away from her, and she was blaming herself bitterly. Perhaps self-reproach was never sharper than Mrs. Darling's as she paced the drawing-room this night. It seemed to her, now, that she might have foreseen something of the sort; that she should have kept her attractive daughter under her own eye. But she thought she had taken every precaution. She had charged Mary Anne not to admit gentlemen as visitors during her absence--unless, she had added, they were of a certain standing as to age, and married. Some few she had especially interdicted by name. Above all others would she have interdicted Mr. St. John of Alnwick, had she supposed that this would be the result; and she mentally heaped the most bitter reproaches on Mary Anne, and felt that she should like to shake her.

She turned to the bell with a sudden impulse, and rang it; indeed, Mrs. Darling was always an impulsive woman. All the servants had gone upstairs on Mrs. Darling's entrance, except the lady's-maid; hours were early in the quiet household. Mary Prance came in: a slender woman of five-and-thirty, with dark eyes and brown marks on her thin face; she wore a neat grey alpaca gown and small white linen wristbands and collar. A woman devoted to her mistress's interests, but disliked by the servants, who went so far as to call her a "deceitful cat." But Mary Prance was a clever woman, and not deceitful on the whole. She gratefully liked Mrs. Darling, who was always kind to her, and she loved the eldest daughter; but she cared for no one else in the wide world. She had entered the service as housemaid, a young girl, but her mistress had called her "Prance" from the first. Mrs. Darling--you remember the hint I gave you--could not call her servants by their simple Christian names. She turned sharply as the door opened.

"Where's Miss Darling?"

"Miss Darling has been in bed some time, ma'am. She went at eight o'clock. Her sore-throat was painful, though a trifle easier."

"Prance, who has visited here during my absence?" interrupted Mrs. Darling, impatiently drowning the words. "What gentlemen?"

The lady's-maid considered for a moment, recalling the visitors. "Dr. Graves, ma'am; he has come the oftenest, I think. And Mr. Pym, and old Sir William----"

"Not those old people, Prance; I don't care to hear about them," said Mrs. Darling, peevishly. "I mean young men---single men."

"Not any, I think," answered Prance, after a pause. "Miss Darling was denied to them."

"Mr. St. John of Alnwick has come?"

"Oh yes, Mr. St. John has come. He has come often."

With the answer, Mrs. Darling quitted the room for the chamber of her unconsciously offending daughter. The poor girl woke up, hot and startled at the unexpected entrance; at the sharp questions that so rudely assailed her ear. Not for some few moments did she understand sufficiently to answer.

Mr. Carleton St. John? Yes, he had been there rather frequently in the past few weeks. Had Charlotte had opportunities of seeing him alone? Yes, very likely she had; it might be so.

"Did you know," resumed Mrs. Darling, suppressing the storm of reproaches so ready to break from her lips, "that any attachment was arising between her and Mr. St. John?"

"No, mamma, I never knew it," replied Mary Anne, fully awake now. "I did not think of such a thing. _Has_ it arisen?"

"Yes, it has arisen, you unhappy, careless creature, and I fear that she's going to marry him," retorted Mrs. Darling. "You are a hundred years older than Charlotte in staid experience. I entrusted her to your charge here as I might a younger sister, and you have suffered her to meet George St. John, and this is the result! I shall never forgive you, Mary Anne. Did I not warn you that I would have no single men calling here during my absence?"

"But--but--Mr. St. John is not a single man," returned the unfortunate Mary Anne, too bewildered to collect her senses. "I'm sure I did not think of him as anything but a widower steeped in grief. It seems only the other day that his wife died. I did not think of him at all as a marrying man."

Neither, in point of fact, had Mrs. Darling, or she might have expressly interdicted his visits by name, as she had those of others.

Mary Anne Darling was collecting her wits. She sat up in bed, thinking possibly that might help her. "Mamma, you _cannot_ really expect to keep Charlotte unmarried! Remember her beauty. If it were me or Margaret, you might----"

"You or Margaret!" screamed Mrs. Darling, excessively incensed at something or other in the words. "I wish you were both going to be married tomorrow! or tonight, for the matter of that."

"I was going to ask you, mamma," pursued Mary Anne, meek still in spite of the covert sneer, "what objection you can possibly have to her marrying Mr. St. John?"

"That's my business and not yours," said Mrs. Darling, tartly.

Mary Anne had never heard her mother altogether so cross, never seen her so vexed, and the girl wondered excessively. Hitherto, she had supposed the objection which existed to Charlotte's marrying, and which she had not failed to detect, arose from an exalted idea on her mother's part that no one likely to present himself was worthy of Miss Norris in a worldly point of view. But surely this could not apply to Mr. St. John of Alnwick! She spoke again, pursuing her train of thought.

"He will be Sir George St. John sometime, mamma; he will be more wealthy than he is now. It is really a better match than even Charlotte could have hoped for."

"I would give every shilling I possess in the world, rather than Charlotte should marry him!" spoke Mrs. Darling, in low, determined tones. "I would sacrifice half the years I have yet to live to keep her with me always! I shall never forgive you, Mary Anne. When you found that George St. John was taking to come here, you ought to have sent me word."

"Mamma, listen. I have told you that I never thought of such a thing as that Mr. Carleton St. John came, or could come, with any such idea; he, who has only just lost his wife. But if I had thought of it, if I had known it, what would have been my will against Charlotte's? It might have pleased her that he should be admitted; and you know you have taught us to give way to her in all things."

"Then you might have written to me. I repeat to you, Mary Anne, that I shall never forgive you."

"It must be, that he was previously married--that Charlotte's children will not inherit," cried Mary Anne, speaking aloud in her wonder, as she strove to find reasonable grounds for the objection to Mr. St. John. "But----"

"Hold your tongue," interrupted Mrs. Darling. "You have done mischief enough, without seeking for reasons that may not be disclosed."

More and more surprised grew Mary Anne. The last words were not spoken in reproach or anger, but in a tone of deep, bitter pain. They bore a sound of wailing, of lamentation; and she could only stare after her mother in silence, as Mrs. Darling quitted the room not less abruptly than she had entered it.

Mary Anne Darling lay down again, and curled the clothes round her with a pettish movement, feeling excessively aggrieved. But that was nothing new. She and Margaret had suffered all their lives through Charlotte, and had never rebelled. Miss Norris had been first and foremost; had received all the love, all the consideration, all the care; the house had only seemed to go on in reference to the well-being and convenience of its eldest daughter.

Brought up to this from their earliest years, Mary Anne and Margaret Darling had accepted it as one of life's obligations. But the young lady was feeling now that she was being unjustly censured. If there did exist any objection to Mr. Carleton St. John, Charlotte should be blamed for falling in love with him, or else be made to relinquish him. But Miss Darling did not believe in any objection: she thought her mother only wished to keep Charlotte to herself in her jealous affection--that she could not bear to part with her.

"I never knew anything so unreasonable," grumbled the young lady, giving the pillow a fierce poke upwards. "Charlotte was sure to marry sometime, and but for her mother's great watchfulness, she'd have been married before this. I _cannot_ understand mamma. What though Charlotte _is_ the apple of her eye, ought she to wish to prevent her fulfilling woman's proper destiny? The love of most mothers causes them to wish their daughters to marry; some to go the length of scheming for it: in this case it is schemed against. It is very selfish, very inconsistent; and yet mamma is not a selfish woman! I can't understand her."

Mrs. Darling's opposition was not yet over. She sat the next day in her own room, thinking what an ill-used woman she was, calling up every little remembered cross of her past life; as many of us are prone to do in moments of annoyance, when things wear a gloomy aspect. She had married--a girl not out of her teens--Mr. Norris, of Norris Court, a gentleman whose standing in the county was almost as good as that of the St. Johns of Alnwick. But ere she had well realized her position as the wife of a wealthy man, the mistress of a place so charming as Norris Court; almost ere her baby was born, Mr. Norris died, and the whole thing seemed to pass from her as a dream. Had the child proved a boy she had been well off, and Norris Court still been hers as a residence; proving a girl, it lapsed from her to the next male heir in the entail. She turned out of it with her baby, the little Charlotte, and a small income of a few hundreds a year. These hundreds, at her own death, would be Charlotte's. The pretty house she had since called her home was in point of fact Charlotte's, not hers. It had come to Charlotte on her father's death, but she had it to reside in for her life. Norris Court was two miles distant from Alnwick; and Mrs. Norris in her young widowhood had quarrelled with its new possessors. The breach had never been healed, so that Charlotte was a stranger to her forefathers' home. Except for this cottage and the few hundreds a year, all in expectation, Charlotte Norris had nothing. How Mrs. Norris had bewailed these past untoward circumstances, her own heart alone knew.

Her own subsequent marriage with Colonel Darling had not greatly improved her circumstances in the long-run. At the Colonel's death, the chief portion of what he had passed to their son. A little was settled on the daughters, and Mrs. Darling had a certain benefit for life. But altogether her income was not a large one, especially considering her many wants, and that she was not one who could make a sovereign go as far as most people; and Mrs. Darling was in the habit of thinking that fate might have been kinder to her. In the lost glories of Norris Court, present benefits, real though they were, were overlooked. But for these comparisons, bred of discontent, some of us would get on better in the world than we do.

She sat in her own room, glancing back at these past grievances, dwelling on others that were more recent. It was the day following the fête. The interview with Mr. Carleton St. John was over, and Charlotte was his promised wife. Mrs. Darling had done what she could to oppose it--to the secret surprise of Mr. St. John; but her opposition was untenable, and had broken down. "If you have any tangible objection to me, name it, and let me combat it as I best may," said Mr. St. John. But apparently Mrs. Darling could bring forward none, save the foolishly fond one that she could not part with Charlotte; and the engagement took place. As Mrs. Darling sat now, alone, her mind was still busy with a hundred wild schemes for its frustration.

But she saw clearly that they would all be worse than useless; that unless there was some special interposition of Providence, Charlotte would go to Alnwick. What was the secret of her opposition? Ah, my reader, you must turn over many pages ere you arrive at that. She had one very great and good reason for dreading the marriage of her daughter with George St. John of Alnwick.

Charlotte happened to come into the room as she sat there. Mrs. Darling held out her hand; and Charlotte--who might have looked radiant with happiness but that she and her countenance were of an undemonstrative nature in general--came and sat on a stool at her feet, her dress, bright mauve muslin, floating around, her delicate hands raised from their open lace sleeves to her mother's knee.

"I must say a few words to you, Charlotte. Promise to hear me patiently and calmly."

"Of course I will, mamma."

"There's no of course in the matter, I fear. Times have been, Charlotte, when----"

"Oh mamma, never mind all that. I'm going to be good. Tell me what it is."

"Do you remember, some three years ago--yes, it must be quite three years now, for we did not leave London that year until August--that we saw a good deal of George St. John? We had met him in London that season; we met him on our return here; and he fell into the habit of calling on us often."

"I remember," replied Charlotte.

"The beginning of October we left home for Paris; a sudden resolution on my part, you girls thought; which was true. Charlotte, I must tell you now why I went. I was taking you from danger; I was carrying you away from George St. John."

A momentary glance upwards of Charlotte's eyes. Did Mrs. Darling read anger in them? That something made her quail, there was no doubt, and she laid firm hold of both those slender wrists resting on her knee.

"For your sake, Charlotte; it was for your sake. I feared you were growing to love him."

"And if I were?" retorted Charlotte.

There was a long pause. Mrs. Darling appeared to be weighing some question with herself: she looked anxious, troubled, undecided: but she still held the hands with a firm grasp.

"Charlotte, I want you to trust me. There is a reason, why you should not become the wife of Mr. Carleton of Alnwick; but I cannot tell you what it is. I cannot so much as hint at its nature. I want you to trust me that this cause does exist; and to act upon it."

"To act upon it?"

"By declining to become Mrs. Carleton St. John."

"No," said Charlotte, very quietly. "What is the cause?"

"My darling, I have said that I cannot tell you: and that is why I ask you to trust me as confidently as you did when a little child. The thought came over me just now, while Mr. Carleton was here, to speak openly to him. The next moment I felt faint and sick with dread at the bare thought. I may not tell Mr. Carleton; I will not tell you----"

"I do wish you wouldn't call him by that name!" Charlotte interrupted.

"My dear, it is that I have fallen into the habit of it," murmured Mrs. Darling.

"It's like a scene in a play," exclaimed Charlotte. "I may not marry George St. John for some reason, and I may not know what the reason is! He is not going to turn out my brother, or cousin, I suppose? Rather romantic, that, for these matter-of-fact days!"

"Oh, Charlotte, be serious! Do not indulge in nonsense now. You know that you are Charlotte Norris, and that he is George St. John; and that you never were related yet. It is not that: I wish it were nothing else."

"What is it?"

"I cannot tell you, Charlotte. I cannot; I cannot."

"Have you heard anything against him, that you are concealing?"

Mrs. Darling lifted her hand to her face, partially hiding it. She did not answer the question.

"Charlotte, you know how I love you. Well, I would almost rather see you die, than married to George St. John. No mother ever schemed to get her daughter a husband, as I schemed three years ago to keep you from one, when my suspicions were aroused that you were in danger of loving George St. John."

"The danger had ripened," said Charlotte, in low tones. "I did love him."

"My poor girl! And _his_ love, though I did not know it then, was given to Caroline Carleton----"

"Don't say it!" interrupted Charlotte: and for the second time during their interview Mrs. Darling quailed, the tone was so wild, so full of pain. "I do not wish to be spoken to of his first wife," she added calmly, after a pause.

"You will not, surely, be his second, Charlotte! Charlotte, my Charlotte! You will not break my heart!"

"You will break mine, if you forbid me to marry Mr. St. John," was the whispered answer. "But indeed, mamma, I think we are talking nonsense," broke off Charlotte. "I am no longer a child. I am nearly nine-and-twenty; and that's rather too old to be told I may not marry, when there's no real cause why I should not do so."

"No real cause! What have I been saying, Charlotte?"

"I think there is none. I think what you are saying must be a chimera."

Mrs. Darling let fall the hands she held; she had only hoped against hope. Charlotte rose and bent over her mother to kiss her, whispering a few decisive words. Cruel words to her mother's heart.

"It is of no use trying to separate us, mamma. You did enough mischief in separating us before--but until this hour, I knew not that you acted intentionally. But for that, I might have been his first wife, chosen before all."

Charlotte Norris was wrong, so far: Mr. St. John's love had never before been given to her: it never would be given to her as it had been to Caroline Carleton. The first fresh green of the heart's spring had had its day, and was gone for ever.

A few more days; another attempt or two, futile as this one; a short, sharp battle with her secret wishes, and Mrs. Darling gave up opposition, and grew apparently reconciled to what she could not prevent. And in midwinter, just after the new year came in, the newspapers had another piece of news to relate, concerning Mr. St. John.

"On the 2nd of January, at the church of St. Mary, Alnwick, by the Reverend Dr. Graves, George Carleton St. John, Esquire, of Alnwick Hall, to Charlotte Augusta, only child of the late Herbert Norris, Esquire, of Norris Court."