St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"No; nonsense!"--but for all his denial there was a glow of consciousness on Mr. Marlborough's countenance. "Eleanor, I honestly believe that you have been listening to the folly talked by those schoolgirls, and taken it for gospel. Rose Darling is very pretty, and likes to be admired; and if I have been thrown a good deal with her, who threw me? You, Eleanor, by your coldness and avoidance of me. I don't deny that I have talked lightly and gaily with Rose, never seriously; I don't deny that----" I have kissed her, he was going to add in his candour, but thought it might be as well to leave that out before Mrs. Seymour. "But my love and my allegiance have never swerved from you, Eleanor."

She burst into happy tears. Mrs. Seymour cut them short sternly.

"Eleanor, this note that you talk of, left by Miss Darling on her bed the other night, must have been meant as a hoax upon you and the two credulous young ladies, your companions. I did think it a most strange thing that a young lady of position should be guilty of anything so vulgar as an elopement. Not but that it was excessively bad to make it the subject even of a jest."

"I suppose it must have been," sobbed Eleanor. "And it seemed so earnest!"

Mr. Marlborough could have disclosed how earnest, had he chosen. In that interview in the salon with Rose, when he told her he was going away, he learnt how much she loved him. In the anguish of parting, Rose dropped words that sufficiently enlightened him--if he had not been enlightened before. He passed it all off as a jest; he said something to the effect that he had better take her with him to Gretna, all in jest, in simple folly: and he spoke in this light manner for Rose's sake: he would not suffer her to think she had betrayed her secret. What, then, was his astonishment when, in coming out of the permit office at night on the port, preparatory to stepping on board the boat, to see Rose! She had taken his words seriously. What he would have done to save the boat in his dilemma--for he must inevitably have lost it while he escorted Rose back to Madame de Nino's--he did not know; but at that moment who should come up but Captain Darling. He gave the young lady into her brother's charge, with a half-word of explanation; and he never supposed but that Rose had been safely lodged at school within the hour. But Mr. Marlborough was a man who could keep his counsel on these particulars, even to Eleanor, and he did keep it.

"Let this be a warning to your wedded life, Eleanor," observed Mrs. Seymour. "Never have any concealments from your husband. Had you frankly spoken to Mr. Marlborough of that first misdirected letter, which seems to have been the primary cause of all the mischief, the affair would have been cleared up at once."

"It's enough to make a man swear he will never use another envelope," exclaimed Mr. Marlborough, with his old happy smile of love. "But you need not have doubted me, Eleanor."

Meanwhile, where was Rose? Madame de Nino, in the eleventh stage of desperation and perplexity, sent ten times a day to Captain Darling's lodgings; but he had disappeared also. Mam'selle Fifine, who of course came in for the blame, alternately sobbed and scolded aloud; and Adeline and Mary Carr felt sick with the weight of the secret they were keeping. This state of things, stormy within doors as the weather was without, lasted for three days, and then Rose returned, escorted by her brother.

But what a shocking plight she was in! Drenched with rain and sea-water; clothes soaked and clinging round her; quite prostrated with three days' sea-sickness; lying half-dead all that time in a rolling fishing-smack, the wind blowing great guns and she nearly dead with fright; nothing to eat and drink on board but salt herrings and sour beer, even supposing she could have eaten at all!--no wonder Rose forgot her good manners and told her brother he was a brute for taking her. Rose had happened to put on her best things, too: a white chip bonnet and pearl-grey damask dress. You should have seen them when she came in!

So it was quite a mistake. Miss Carr and Adeline found, a trick, no doubt, played them purposely by Rose, and there had been no elopement at all, or thought of one: nothing but a three-days' cruise round the coast with her brother, in the fishing-smack of some honest, rough, hard-working sailors! Captain Darling made a thousand apologies to Madame de Nino when he brought her home--the object that Rose presented upon his handing her out of the coach!--and laid it all to the fault of that treacherous wind; which had kept them at sea three days, when he had only contemplated treating her to a little excursion of an hour for the good of her health.