St. Martin's Eve: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Madame was appeased at length. But Mam'selle Fifine is sore upon the point to this day. As she justly observed, there must have been something out of the common amiss with that particular fishing-boat. Granted the rough wind; but other boats made the port fast enough, so why not that one? Rose could or would give no explanation, and was as sullen as a bear for a whole month.

And ere that month had well run its course, news came down from Paris of the marriage of George Marlborough and Miss Seymour.

[CHAPTER XI.]

GEORGINA BEAUCLERC'S LOVE

We must go to Castle Wafer. Isaac St. John has his writing-table drawn to the open window this mellow September day, and sits at it. But he is not writing now. He leans back in his padded chair, and the lines of thought--of care--lie on his otherwise serene face. Care for Isaac St. John the recluse? Verily, yes; even for him. If we could live lives of utter isolation from our species, we might escape it; otherwise, never.

Looking at him now, his back buried in the soft chair, his face, so pleasant to the eye, turned rather upwards, and his thin white hands resting listlessly, one on the elbow of the chair, one down on his knee, a stranger would have failed to detect anything amiss with the person of Isaac St. John, or that it was not like other men's. For the first forty years of Isaac St. John's existence, his days had been as one long, ever-present mortification; that disfiguring hump and his sensitiveness doing battle together. Why it should be so, I know not, but it is an indisputable fact, that where any defect of person exists, any deformity--two of the qualities pertaining to our nature exist in the mind in a supereminent degree, sensitiveness and vanity, perhaps for the good of the soul, certainly to the marring of its peace. It has been so since the world began; it will be so to its ending. Isaac St. John was no exception. There never can be an exception; for this seems to be a law of nature. Remember the club-foot of Byron, and what it did for him. This shrinking sensitiveness, far more than his health, had converted Mr. St. John into a hermit. It was terrible to him to go forth unto the gaze of his fellow-men, for--he carried his deformity with him. Now that he was advancing in years, growing onwards to be an old man, the feeling was wearing off; the keen edge of the razor which had cut all ways was becoming somewhat blunt: but it must ever remain with him in a greater or lesser degree.

He was not thinking of it now. It was when he was in the presence of others, or when making up his mind to go into their presence, that the defect was so painfully present to him. As he sat there, his brow knit with its lines, two things were troubling him: the one was a real, tangible care, the other was only a perplexity.

His own mother had lived to bring him up; and how she had cherished and loved her unfortunate son, the only heir to the broad lands of the St. Johns, that son's heart ached even now to think of. At the time she died, he wished he could die also; his happiest thoughts now were spent in her remembrance; his most comforting moments those when he lost himself in the anticipation of the meeting that awaited them hereafter. He was a grown-up man, getting old it almost seemed to his lonely heart, when the little half-brother was born, the only issue of his father's second marriage. How Isaac St. John took to this little baby, loved it, fondled it, played with it, he might have been half ashamed to tell in words. The boy had been his; as his own; since the death of their father, he had been his sole care; and now that boy, grown to manhood, was going the way of the world and bringing trouble into his home. No very great and irremediable trouble yet: but enough to pain and worry the sensitive heart that so loved him.

As if to compensate for the malformation of the one brother, the other was gifted with almost surpassing beauty. The good looks of Frederick St. John had become a proverb in the gay world. But these favoured sons of men are beset by temptations in an unusual degree, and perhaps they may not be much the better for the beauty in the long-run. Had Frederick St. John been less high-principled by nature; or been less carefully and prayerfully trained by his brother Isaac, things might have been a great deal worse with him than they were. He had not parted with honour, but he had parted with money; a handsome patrimony which he had succeeded to when he became of age, was mortgaged thick and threefold, and Mr. Frederick was deep in debt and embarrassment.

Mr. St. John glanced towards some letters lying on his table. The letters had brought the trouble to him. It would seem as if Frederick's affairs had in some way come to a sudden crisis, for these letters, three of them, had all arrived in the course of the past week. They were ugly letters from ugly creditors asking him to pay them; and until their reception Mr. St. John had not possessed any knowledge of the state of affairs. He had believed Frederick to be in the habit of getting rid of a great deal more money than he had need to do; but he had not glanced at debt, or embarrassment. It had so completely upset him--a little thing did that in his delicate health--that for a day and a night he was incapable of action; he could only nurse his pain. Then he sent answers to the parties, saying that the matters should be examined into; and he wrote to Frederick, who was in London, to come to him without delay. He was waiting for him; the senses of his ears were opened now, listening for his footsteps: he was growing anxious and weary, for Frederick might have responded to the call on the past day.