St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Two minutes at the least elapsed before he remembered Prance, who had stood perfectly still, she and her charge. He turned to the baby to caress it, but his voice and face were strange, and of course it set up a loud cry, the more loud that it had not recovered its temper. Mr. St. John left it and walked across the grass with Benja, his whole attention absorbed by his first-born. The boy was sometimes caught up in his arms for a fresh embrace, sometimes flitting along by his side on the grass, hand in hand, the steel buttons on the child's green velvet tunic flashing in the sun. He had taken off his cap, throwing it to Honour, and his pretty curls blew away from his brow with every movement, displaying that winning expression of feeling and intelligence of which his features had given promise in his infancy.

Mr. St. John waved his hat to his wife at the open window. She had seen it all; the loving meeting with the one child, the neglect of the other. Passion, anger, jealousy, waged war within her. She could no more have controlled them than she could control the wind that was making free with her husband's hair. All she saw, all she felt, was that he had betrayed his ardent love for Benja, his indifference to her child. In that one moment she was as a mad woman.

What exactly occurred upon his entrance, George St. John could not afterwards remember; he was too much scared, too terrified, it may be said, to receive or retain any correct impression. A strange, wild look on his wife's face, telling, as it seemed to him, of madness; a wail of reproaches, such as had never been addressed to him from woman's lips; Benja struck to the ground with a violent blow, and his cheek bleeding from it, passed before his eyes as in a troubled vision. It appeared to last but a moment; but a moment: the next, she had sunk on a sofa; pale, trembling, hysterical.

George St. John collected his scattered senses, and picked up the child. He wiped his poor little outraged face with a handkerchief, laid it on his bosom for an instant to soothe him to composure, and carried him into the hall to Honour. The girl cried out when she saw the cheek, and looked up at her master with inquiring eyes. But his were averted.

"An accident," he quietly said. "Wash it with a little warm water."

He returned to the room, closing the door on himself and his wife. He did not reproach her by so much as a word: he did not speak to her: he went to the window and stood there in silence, looking out, his back turned to her, and his forehead pressed against one of the panes.

She began to utter reproaches now, sobbing violently; fond reproaches, that all his affection was lavished upon Benja, leaving none for her child. He replied coldly, without turning round, that his affection was as lively for one child as for the other; he was not conscious of any difference, and hoped he never should be: but an infant of five months old who cried at his approach, could not yet be made the companion to him that Benja was.

"Oh, George, forgive me!" she sobbed, coming close to him, and laying her hand on him caressingly. "I love--I love you; and I could not bear it. He is our child, you know; yours and mine; and it seemed as if he was nothing to you beside Benja. Won't you forgive me?"

He could not resist the pleading words; he could not throw back the soft hand that was stealing itself into his. "I forgive it; if you think forgiveness lies with me, Charlotte," he answered, turning round at last, but speaking sadly and quietly.

"You have not kissed me," she whispered, the tears chasing each other down her cheeks.