St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Oh, that," coldly returned Mrs. St. John, as if the fact were not worth a thought. "The other had an addition which this must lack. It ran in this way: 'the wife of George Carleton St. John, of a son and heir.'"

Mrs. Darling made no rejoinder. But she cast a keen, stealthy glance at Charlotte from time to time, as she busied herself with some trifle at a distance.

Things had gone on very smoothly at the Hall during the past few months. Mrs. St. John had been at least kind to Benja, sufficiently loving in manner; and Honour liked her new mistress tolerably well. The girl's feeling towards her may best be described as a negative one; neither like nor dislike. She did not dislike her as she had formerly believed she should do; and she did not very much like her.

Perhaps if there had been a characteristic more prominent than another in the disposition of Charlotte Morris, it was jealousy. Mrs. Darling had been obliged to see this--and to see it exercised, too--during the course of her daughter's past life; and one of her objections to the master of Alnwick Hall, as a husband for Charlotte, was the fact that he had been once married and his heir was already born. That Charlotte would be desperately jealous of the little Benja, should she bear a son of her own, jealous perhaps to hatred, Mrs. Darling felt sure of: she devoutly hoped there would be no children; and an uncomfortable feeling had been upon her from the hour she learnt of the anticipated arrival. So long as Charlotte was without a son, there could be no very formidable jealousy of Benja. But there might be afterwards.

Certainly, there existed a wide difference between the future of the two-year-old boy, sturdily stamping about the gravel-path underneath, the great St. Bernard's dog, "Brave," harnessed with tape before him; and that of the young infant lying in the cradle by the fireside. Many a mother, far more gentle and self-forgetting than was Charlotte St. John, might have felt a pang in contemplating the contrast. Benja had a title in prospective; he would be rich amidst the rich. George (by that name the infant was already registered) might count his future income by a few hundreds. The greater portion of the Alnwick estate (not a very large one) was strictly entailed; and the large fortune brought to Mr. St. John by his first wife, was now Benja's. Mr. St. John would probably have wished to do as well by one child as by the other, but he could not help himself; he could not alter the existing state of things. The settlement he had been enabled to make on Miss Norris was very, very small; but he intended to redeem this by putting by yearly some of his large income for her and her children. Still the contrast was great, and Mrs. Darling knew that Charlotte was dwelling upon it with bitterness, when she laid that emphasis just now on the "son and heir."

That Mrs. St. John would inordinately love this child of hers, there was no doubt about--far more so than might be well for herself or for him. Mrs. Darling saw it as she lay there--lay looking with eager, watchful eyes at the little face in the cradle; and Mrs. Darling decided within herself--it may have been from experience--that such love does not bring peace in its wake. "I wish it had been a girl!" thought Mrs. Darling.

Charlotte Norris had all her life been subject to taking likes and dislikes--occasionally violent ones; and she took a strong dislike to the nurse that was now in attendance upon her, barely suffering her in the room, and insisting on Prance's seeing to the baby instead, for Prance was at the Hall with her mistress. The result was, that when, at the end of a fortnight, Mrs. Darling quitted the Hall, Prance was transferred to Mrs. St. John's service, and remained as nurse to the infant.

Some months went on, and spring came round. Mr. Carleton St. John, who was in parliament, had to be in London; but his wife remained at Alnwick with her baby, who seemed delicate. Not to have brought to herself all the good in the world, would she have stirred without him. The frail little infant of a few days had become to her the greatest treasure earth ever gave; her love for him was of that wild, impassioned, all-absorbing nature, known, it is hoped, but to few, for it never visits a well-regulated heart.

And in proportion to her love for her own child, grew her jealousy of Benja--nay, not jealousy only, but dislike. Mrs. Darling had foreseen correctly: the jealousy and the dislike had come--the hatred would only too surely follow. Charlotte strove against this feeling. She knew how wrong it was, how disloyal to her husband, how cruel to Benja; and she fought against it well. She would take Benja on her knee and fondle him; and the child grew to love her, to run into her at all moments when he could triumphantly escape from Honour, and she would take him and pretend to hide him, and tell Honour to go into the woods and see if the little wild boy had flown thither. It is true that once or twice, upon some very slight provocation, she had fallen into a storm of passion that literally rendered Honour motionless with alarm, seizing the child somewhat after the manner of a tiger, and beating him furiously. Honour and Benja were alike frightened; even Prance looked on aghast.

Matters were not improved by the conduct of the two nurses. If dislike and dissatisfaction had reigned between them when Prance was only an occasional visitor at the house, how much more did it reign now! They did not break frequently into a quarrel, but a perpetual system of what the other servants called "nagging" was kept up between them. Fierce and fiery was the disposition with which each regarded the other; a war of resentment, of antipathy--call it what you will--smouldering ever in their hearts.