St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Still he did not see any feasible way of altering the arrangements he had made. When he died, Alnwick Hall would be Benja's, and must be the boy's chief home during his minority; he could not turn his wife out of it, and he could not place any one else in it as Benja's personal guardian. He had no means of providing a suitable residence for his widow if she left the Hall: in fact, it was only as the heir's guardian that he could at all adequately provide for her. Neither, it must be confessed, did Mr. St. John himself see any great necessity for separating them: but he was a man amenable to counsel, open to advice, and the opinion of two friends (surely both may be called so!) so attached to him as Mr. Pym and Honour, bore weight with him. It had not been George St. John had he ignored it.

"May God help me to do right!" he murmured, as he entered the house.

He dwelt much upon it during the remainder of the day; he lay awake part of the night: and only when he came to a decision did he get to sleep. Early the next morning he rang for his servant; and at eight o'clock the pony-carriage conveyed him to the railway station at Alnwick to take the train. As the market people looked at him, passing them betimes in the fresh February morning, at the bright colour in his face, the wavy brown hair stirred by the gentle breeze, they said to themselves, how well Mr. Carleton St. John was looking, though thin.

He was going over to Castle Wafer. An hour and a-quarter's journey brought him to a certain town; there he waited twenty minutes, and took another train. Rather more than another hour and a-quarter of very quick travelling, for this last was an express, conveyed him to Lexington, and thence he took a fly to Castle Wafer.

It was one of the most charming houses ever seen, nestling in lovely grounds, amidst rising trees of many species. A modern house, built by its present owner, Isaac St. John, who possessed a rare taste for the beautiful, and had made it exquisite. That house was his hobby in life; his care was his half-brother, Frederick St. John. The estate of Castle Wafer was the entailed inheritance of these St. Johns; and Frederick was heir presumptive: the positive heir, said the world; for it was beyond the range of probability that its present owner would ever marry.

They were second-cousins to the St. Johns of Alnwick, and were next in succession. Of great wealth themselves, far more so than was George St. John, and of more note in the world, they were yet below him in succession to what might be called the original family property. That was not Alnwick. An old baronet of eighty-one, Sir Thomas St. John, held it; he was childless, and therefore it would come at his death to George St. John, and to George St. John's sons after him. Had he, George St. John, also been childless, the whole, including the title, including Alnwick, would lapse to Isaac St. John.

George St. John had nearly a two-mile drive. He noted the familiar points on the road and in the fine landscape, as they stood out in the clear but not very bright February day. The sprinkling of cottages near Castle Wafer; the solitary public-house, called the Barley Mow, with its swinging sign-board; and the old-fashioned red-brick house, Lexington Rectory, which the wiseacres of other days had built nearly two miles from its church and Lexington proper. It stood close to the grounds of Castle Wafer; was the only house of any social standing very near to it; and as George St. John glanced at its windows as he passed, he remembered that its present possessor had received his title to orders from a church in the neighbourhood of Alnwick, of which his father was patron; but he had been a very, very little boy at the time. The house looked empty now; its windows were nearly all closed: and he supposed its incumbent, Dr. Beauclerc, Rector of Lexington and Dean of Westerbury, was away at his deanery.

"Mr. St. John is at home?" he asked, as the woman came out to throw back the lodge gates.

"Oh yes, sir." And indeed George St. John had little need to ask, for Mr. St. John rarely, very rarely, was away from Castle Wafer.

A few minutes' turning and winding, and then the front of the house burst upon George St. John's view, and he was close upon it. The sun broke out at the moment, and he thought he had never before seen any place so beautiful; he always did think so, whenever he thus came upon Castle Wafer. The glistening white front, long rather than high, with its elaboration of ornament; the green terraces, covered with their parterres of flowers, already in bloom, and stretching beyond to the less open grounds; the low French windows, open to the breeze--never did any dwelling impart so cheerful, so attractive a look as did Castle Wafer. To a stranger, having no idea of the sort of house he was going to see, perhaps surprise would be the first feeling; for the place was as unlike a castle as any place could be. Isaac St. John said laughingly sometimes that he ought to change its appellation. There might have been a castle on the lands in the old feudal ages, but no trace remained of it: and the house, which had been pulled down to give place to this fairy edifice, had looked like a companion to the Rectory--red, gaunt, and gloomy.