Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER XXVII
Mrs. Lennox’s house was not a great country-house like Highcourt. It was within a mile of Clifton, a pretty house, set in pretty grounds, with a few fields about it, and space enough to permit of a sufficient but modest establishment; horses and dogs, and pets in any number to satisfy the children. Reginald, indeed, when he came home for the holidays, somewhat scoffed at the limited household, and declared that there was scarcely room to breathe. For the young master of Highcourt everything was small and shabby, but as his holidays were broken by visits to the houses of his schoolfellows, where young Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt had many things in his favor, and as he thus managed to get as much shooting and hunting and other delights as a schoolboy can indulge in, he was, on the whole, gracious enough to Aunt Sophy and Rosalind, and their limited ways. The extraordinary changes that followed his father’s death had produced a curious effect upon the boy; there had been, indeed, a moment of impulse in which he had declared his intention of standing by his mother, but a fuller understanding of all that was involved had summarily checked this. The youthful imagination, when roused by the thought of wealth and importance, is as insatiable in these points as it is when inflamed by the thirst for pleasure, and it is, perhaps, more difficult to give up or consent to modify greatness which you have never had, but have hoped for, than to give up an actual possession. Reginald had felt this importance as his father’s heir so much, that the idea of depriving himself of it for the sake of his mother brought a sudden damp and chill all over his energies. He was silent when he heard what a sacrifice was necessary, even though it was a sacrifice in imagination only, the reality being unknown to him. And from that moment the thing remarkable in him was that he had never mentioned his mother’s name.
With the other children this effect had at the end of the year been almost equally attained, but by degrees; they had ceased to refer to her as they had ceased to refer to their father. Both parents seemed to have died together to these little ones. The one, like the other, faded as the dead do out of their personal sphere, and ceased to have any place in their life. They said Rosalind now, when they used to say mamma. But with Reginald the effect was different—young though he was, in his schoolboy sphere he had a certain knowledge of the world. He knew that it was something intolerable when a fellow’s family was in everybody’s mouth, and his mother was discussed and talked of, and there was a sort of half-fury against her in his mind for subjecting him to this. The pangs which a proud boy feels in such circumstances are difficult to fathom, for their force is aggravated by the fact that he never betrays them. The result was that he never mentioned her, never asked a question, put on a mien of steel when anything was said which so much as suggested her existence, and from the moment of his departure from Highcourt ignored altogether the name and possibility of a mother. He was angry with the very name.
Sophy was the only one who caused a little embarrassment now and then by her recollections of the past life of Highcourt and the household there. But Sophy was not favorable to her mother, which is a strange thing to say, and had no lingering tenderness to smother; she even went so far now and then as to launch a jibe at Rosalind on the subject of mamma. As for the little ones, they already remembered her no more. The Elms, which was the suburban title of Mrs. Lennox’s small domain, became the natural centre of their little lives, and they forgot the greater and more spacious house in which they were born. And now that the second year was nearly accomplished since the catastrophe happened, natural gayety and consolation had come back. Rosalind went out to such festivities as offered. She spent a few weeks in London, and saw a little of society. The cloud had rolled away from her young horizon, leaving only a dimness and mist of softened tears. And the Elms was, in its way, a little centre of society. Aunt Sophy was very hospitable. She liked the pleasant commotion of life around her, and she was pleased to feel the stir of existence which the presence of a girl brings to such a house. Rosalind was not a beauty so remarkable as to draw admirers and suitors from every quarter of the compass. These are rare in life, though we are grateful to meet so many of them in novels; but she was extremely pleasant to look upon, fair and sweet as so many English girls are, with a face full of feeling, and enough of understanding and poetry to give it something of an ideal charm. And though it was, as we have said, the wonder of her life that she had never, like young ladies in novels, had a lover, yet she was not without admiration nor without suitors, quite enough to maintain her self-respect and position in the world.
One of these was the young Hamerton who was a visitor at Highcourt at the opening of this history. He was the son of another county family of the Highcourt neighborhood; not the eldest son, indeed, but still not altogether to be ranked among the detrimentals, since he was to have his mother’s money, a very respectable fortune. And he was by way of being a barrister, although not so unthoughtful of the claims of others as to compete for briefs with men who had more occasion for them. He had come to Clifton for the hunting, not, perhaps, without a consciousness of Rosalind’s vicinity. He had not shown at all during the troubles at Highcourt or for some time after, being too much disturbed and alarmed by his own discovery to approach the sorrowful family. But by degrees this feeling wore off, and a girl who was under Mrs. Lennox’s wing, and who, after all, was not “really the daughter” of the erring woman, would have been most unjustly treated had she been allowed to suffer in consequence of the mystery attached to Madam Trevanion and her disappearance from the world. Mrs. Lennox had known Roland Hamerton’s father as well as Rosalind knew himself. The families had grown up together, calling each other by their Christian names, on that preliminary brother-and-sister footing which is so apt with opportunity to grow into something closer. And Roland had always thought Rosalind the prettiest girl about. When he got over the shock of the Highcourt mystery his heart had come back to her with a bound. And if he came to Clifton for the hunting instead of to any other centre, it was with a pleasant recollection that the Elms was within walking distance, and that there he was always likely to find agreeable occupation for “off” days. On such occasions, and even on days which were not “off” days, he would come, sometimes to luncheon, sometimes in the afternoon, with the very frequent consequence of sending off a message to Clifton for “his things,” and staying all night. He was adopted, in short, as a sort of son or nephew of the house.
It is undeniable that a visitor of this sort (or even more than one) is an addition to the cheerfulness of a house in the country. It may, perhaps, be dangerous to his own peace of mind, or even, if he is frivolous, to the comfort of a daughter of the same, but so long as he is on these easy terms, with no definite understanding one way or the other, he is a pleasant addition. The least amiable of men is obliging and pleasant in such circumstances. He is on his promotion. His raison d’être is his power of making himself agreeable. When he comes to have a definite position as an accepted lover, everything is changed again, and he may be as much in the way as he once was handy and desirable; but in his first stage he is always an addition, especially when the household is chiefly composed of women. Hamerton fell into this pleasant place with even more ease than usual. He was already so familiar with them all, that everything was natural in the arrangement. And Mrs. Lennox, there was no doubt, wished the young man well. It would not be a brilliant match, but it would be “quite satisfactory.” Had young Lord Elmore come a-wooing instead of Roland, that would have been, no doubt, more exciting. But Lord Elmore paid his homage in another direction, and his antecedents were not quite so good as Hamerton’s, who was one of those young men who have never given their parents an anxiety—a qualification which, it is needless to say, was dear above every other to Aunt Sophy’s heart.
He was seated with them in the drawing-room at the Elms on an afternoon of November. It had been a day pleasant enough for the time of year, but not for hunting men—a clear frosty day, with ice in all the ditches, and the ground hard and resounding; a day when it is delightful to walk, though not to ride. Rosalind had met him strolling towards the house when she was out for her afternoon walk. Perhaps he was not so sorry for himself as he professed to the ladies. “I shall bore you to death,” he said; “I shall always be coming, for I see now we are in for a ten days’ frost, which is the most dolorous prospect—at least, it would be if I had not the Elms to fall back upon.” He made this prognostication of evil with a beaming face.
“You seem on the whole to take it cheerfully,” Mrs. Lennox said.
“Yes, with the Elms to fall back upon; I should not take it cheerfully otherwise.”
“But you were here on Saturday, Roland, when the meet was at Barley Wood, and everybody was out,” cried little Sophy. “I don’t think you are half a hunting man. I shouldn’t miss a day if it were me; nor Reginald wouldn’t,” she added, with much indifference to grammar.
“It is all the fault of the Elms,” the young man said, with a laugh.
“I don’t know what you find at the Elms. Reginald says we are so dull here. I think so too—nothing but women; and you that have got two or three clubs and can go where you like.”
“You shall go to the clubs, Sophy, instead of me.”
“That is what I should like,” said Miss Sophy. “Everybody says men are cleverer than women, and I am very fond of good talk. I like to hear you talk of horses and things; and of betting a pot on Bucephalus—”
“Sophy! where did you hear such language? You must be sent back to the nursery,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “if you go on like that.”
“Well,” said Sophy, “Reginald had a lot on Bucephalus: he told me so. He says it’s dreadful fun. You are kept in such a state till the last moment, not knowing which is to win. Sometimes the favorite is simply nowhere, and if you happen to have drawn a dark horse—”
“Sophy! I can’t allow such language.”
“And the favorite has been cooked, don’t you know, or come to grief in the stable,” cried Sophy, breathless, determined to have it out, “then you win a pot of money! It was Reginald told me all that. I don’t know myself, more’s the pity; and because I am a girl I don’t suppose I shall ever know,” the little reprobate said, regretfully.
“Dear me, I never thought those things were permitted at Eton,” said Mrs. Lennox. “I always thought boys were safe there. Afterwards, one knows, not a moment can be calculated upon. That is what is so nice about you, Roland; you never went into anything of that kind. I wish so much, if you are here at Christmas, you would give Reginald a little advice.”
“I don’t much believe in advice, Mrs. Lennox. Besides, I’m not so immaculate as you think me; I’ve had in my day a pot on something or other, as Sophy says—”
“Sophy must not say those sort of things,” said her aunt. “Rosalind, give us some tea. It is quite cold enough to make the fire most agreeable and the tea a great comfort. And if you have betted you have seen the folly of it, and you could advise him all the better. That is always the worst with boys when they have women to deal with. They think we know nothing. Whether it is because we have not education, or because we have not votes, or what, I can’t tell. But Reginald for one does not pay the least attention. He thinks he knows ever so much better than I do. And John is abroad; he doesn’t care very much for John either. He calls him an old fogy; he says the present generation knows better than the last. Did you ever hear such impertinence? And he is only seventeen. I like two lumps of sugar, Rosalind. But I thought at Eton they ought to be safe.”
“I suppose you are going home for Christmas, Roland? Shall you all be at home? Alice and her baby, and every one of you?” Rosalind breathed softly a little sigh. “I don’t like Christmas,” she said; “it is all very well so long as you are quite young, but when you begin to get scattered and broken up—”
“My dear, I am far from being quite young, and I hope I have been scattered as much as anybody, and had every sort of thing to put up with, but I never grow too old or too dull for Christmas.”
“Ah, Aunt Sophy, you! But then you are not like anybody else; you take things so sweetly, even Rex and his impertinence.”
“Christmas is pleasant enough,” said young Hamerton. “We are not so much scattered but that we can all get back, and I like it well enough. But,” he added, “if one was wanted elsewhere, or could be of use, I am not such a fanatic for home but that I could cut it once in a way, if there was anything, don’t you know, Mrs. Lennox, that one would call a duty; like licking a young cub into shape, or helping a—people you are fond of.” He blushed and laughed, in the genial, confusing glow of the fire, and cast a glance at Rosalind to see whether she noted his offer, and understood the motive of it. “People one is fond of;” did she think that meant Aunt Sophy? There was a pleasant mingling of obscurity and light even when the cheerful flame leaped up and illuminated the room: something in its leaping and uncertainty made a delightful shelter. You might almost stare at the people you were fond of without being betrayed as the cold daylight betrays you; and as for the heat which he felt suffuse his countenance, that was altogether unmarked in the genial glow of the cheerful fire.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In an easy house, where punctuality is not rampant, the hour before dinner is pleasant to young people. The lady of the house is gone to dress. If she is beginning to feel the weight of years, she perhaps likes a nap before dinner, and in any case she will change her dress in a leisurely manner and likes to have plenty of time; and the children have been carried off to the nursery that their toilet may be attended to, and no hurried call afterwards interfere with the tying of their sashes. The young lady of the house is not moved by either of these motives. Five minutes is enough for her, she thinks and says, and the room is so cosey and the half light so pleasant, and it is the hour for confidences. If she has another girl with her, they will drift into beginnings of the most intimate narrative, which must be finished in their own rooms after everybody has gone to bed; and if it is not a girl, but the other kind of companion, those confidences are perhaps even more exciting. Rosalind knew what Roland Hamerton wanted, vaguely: she was, on the surface, not displeased with his devotions. She had no intention of coming to so very decided a step as marriage, nor did she for a moment contemplate him as the lover whose absence surprised her. But he was nice enough. She liked well enough to talk to him. They were like brother and sister, she would have said. “Roland—why, I have known him all my life,” she would have exclaimed indignantly to any one who had blamed her for “encouraging” this poor young man. Indeed, Rosalind was so little perfect that she had already on several occasions defended herself in this way, and had not the slightest intention of accepting Roland, and yet allowed him to persuade her to linger and talk after Aunt Sophy had gone up-stairs. This was quite unjustifiable, and a more high-minded young woman would not have done it. But poor Rosalind, though her life had been crossed by a strain of tragedy and though her feelings were very deep and her experiences much out of the common, and her mind capable and ready to respond to very high claims, was yet not the ideal of a high-minded girl. It is to be hoped that she was unacquainted with flirtation and above it, but yet she did not dislike—so long as she could skilfully keep him from anything definite in the way of a proposal, anything that should be compromising and uncomfortable to sit and listen to—the vague adoration which was implied in Hamerton’s talk, and to feel that the poor young fellow was laying himself out to please her. It did please her, and it amused her—which was more. It was sport to her, though it might be death to him. She did not believe that there was anything sufficiently serious in young Hamerton’s feelings or in his character to involve anything like death, and she judged with some justice that he preferred the happiness of the moment, even if it inspired him with false hopes, to the collapse of all those hopes which a more conscientious treatment would have brought about. Accordingly, Rosalind lingered in the pleasant twilight. She sent her aunt’s butler, Saunders, away when he appeared to light the lamps.
“Not yet, Saunders,” she said, “we like the firelight,” in a manner which made Roland’s heart jump. It seemed to that deceived young man that nothing but a flattering response of sentiment in her mind would have made Rosalind, like himself, enjoy the firelight. “That was very sweet of you,” he said.
“What was sweet of me?” The undeserved praise awakened a compunction in her. “There is nothing good in saying what is true. I do like talking by this light. Summer evenings are different, they are always a little sad; but the fire is cheerful, and it makes people confidential.”
“If I could think you wanted me to be confidential, Rosalind!”
“Oh, I do; everybody! I like to talk about not only the outside, but what people are really thinking of. One hears so much of the outside: all the runs you have had, and how Captain Thornton jumps, and Miss Plympton keeps the lead.”
“If you imagine that I admire Miss Plympton—”
“I never thought anything of the kind. Why shouldn’t you admire her? Though she is a little too fond of hunting, she is a nice girl, and I like her. And she is very pretty. You might do a great deal worse, Roland,” said Rosalind, with maternal gravity, “than admire Ethel Plympton. She is quite a nice girl, not only when she is on horseback. But she would not have anything to say to you.”
“That is just as well,” said the young man, “for hers is not the sort of shrine I should ever worship at. The kind of girl I like doesn’t hunt, though she goes like a bird when it strikes her fancy. She is the queen at home, she makes a room like this into heaven. She makes a man feel that there’s nothing in life half so sweet as to be by her, whatever she is doing. She would make hard work and poverty and all that sort of thing delightful. She is—”
“A dreadful piece of perfection!” said Rosalind, with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Don’t you know nobody likes to have that sort of person held up to them? One always suspects girls that are too good. But I hope you sometimes think of other things than girls,” she added, with an air of delightful gravity and disapproval. “I have wanted all this long time to know what you were going to do; and to find instead only that hyperbolical fiend, you know, that talks of nothing but ladies, is disappointing. What would you think of me,” Rosalind continued, turning upon him with still more imposing dignity, “if I talked to you of nothing but gentlemen?”
“Rosalind!—that’s blasphemy to think of; besides that I should feel like getting behind a hedge and shooting all of them,” the young man cried.
“Yes, it is a sort of blasphemy; you would all think a girl a dreadful creature if she did so. But you think you are different, and that it doesn’t matter; that is what everybody says; one law for men and one for women. But I, for one, will never give in to that. I want to know what you are going to do.”
“And suppose,” he cried, “that I were to return the question, since you say there must not be one law for men and one for women. Rosalind, what are you going to do?”
“I?” she said, and looked at him with surprise. “Alas! you know I have my work cut out for me, Roland. I have to bring up the children; they are very young, and it will be a great many years before they can do without me; there is no question about me. Perhaps it is a good thing to have your path quite clear before you, so that you can’t make any mistake about it,” she added, with a little sigh.
“But, Rosalind, that is completely out of the question, don’t you know. Sacrifice yourself and all your life to those children—why, it would be barbarous; nobody would permit it.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosalind, “who has any right to interfere. You think Uncle John, perhaps? Uncle John would never think of anything so foolish. It is much less his business than it is mine; and you forget that I am old enough to judge for myself.”
“Rosalind, you can’t really intend anything so dreadful! Oh, at present you are so young, you are all living in the same house, it does not make so much difference. But to sacrifice yourself, to give up your own life, to relinquish everything for a set of half—”
“You had better not make me angry,” she said. He had sprung to his feet and was pacing about in great excitement, his figure relieved against the blaze of the fire, while she sat in the shadow at one side, protected from the glow. “What am I giving up? In the first place, I know nothing that I am giving up; and I confess that it amuses me, Roland, to see you so excited about my life. I should like to hear what you are going to do with your own.”
“Can’t you understand?” he cried, hastily and in confusion, “that the one might—that the one might—involve perhaps—” And here the young man stopped and looked helplessly at her, not daring to risk what he had for the uncertainty of something better. But it was very hard, when he had gone so far, to refrain.
“Might involve perhaps— No, I can’t understand,” Rosalind said, almost with unconcern. “What I do understand is that you can’t hunt forever if you are going to be any good in life. And you don’t even hunt as a man ought that means to make hunting his object. Do something, Roland, as if you meant it!—that is what I am always telling you.”
“And don’t I always tell you the same thing, that I am no hero. I can’t hold on to an object, as you say. What do you mean by an object? I want a happy life. I should like very well to be kind to people, and do my duty and all that, but as for an object, Rosalind! If you expect me to become a reformer or a philanthropist or anything of that sort, or make a great man of myself—”
Rosalind shook her head softly in her shadowed corner. “I don’t expect that,” she said, with a tone of regret. “I might have done so, perhaps, at one time. At first one thinks every boy can do great things, but that is only for a little while, when one is without experience.”
“You see you don’t think very much of my powers, for all you say,” he cried, hastily, with the tone of offence which the humblest can scarcely help assuming when taken at his own low estimate. Roland knew very well that he had no greatness in him, but to have the fact acknowledged with this regretful certainty was somewhat hard.
“That is quite a different matter,” said Rosalind. “Only a few men (I see now) can be great. I know nobody of that kind,” she added, with once more that tone of regret, shaking her head. “But you can always do something, not hang on amusing yourself, for that is all you ever do, so far as I can see.”
“What does your Uncle John do?” he cried; “you have a great respect for him, and so have I; he is just the best man going. But what does he do? He loafs about; he goes out a great deal when he is in town; he goes to Scotland for the grouse, he goes to Homburg for his health, he comes down and sees you, and then back to London again. Oh, I think that’s all right, but if I am to take him for my example—and I don’t know where I could find a better—”
“There is no likeness between your case and his. Uncle John is old, he has nothing particular given him to do; he is—well, he is Uncle John. But you, Roland, you are just my age.”
“I’m good five years older, if not more.”
“What does that matter? You are my own age, or, according to all rules of comparison between boys and girls, a little younger than me. You have got to settle upon something. I am not like many people,” said Rosalind, loftily; “I don’t say do this or do that; I only say, for Heaven’s sake do something, Roland; don’t be idle all your life.”
“I should not mind so much if you did say do this or do that. Tell me something to do, Rosalind, and I’ll do it for your sake.”
“Oh! that is all folly; that belongs to fairy tales—a shawl that will go through a ring, or a little dog that will go into a nutshell, or a golden apple. They are all allegories, I suppose; the right thing, however, is to do what is right for the sake of what is right, and not because any one in particular tells you.”
“Shall I set up in chambers, and try to get briefs?” said Roland. “But then I have enough to live on, and half the poor beggars at the bar haven’t; and don’t you think it would be taking an unfair advantage, when I can afford to do without and they can’t, and when everybody knows there isn’t half enough business to keep all going? I ask you, Rosalind, do you think that would be fair?”
Here the monitress paused, and did not make her usual eager reply. “I don’t know that it is right to consider that sort of thing, Roland. You see, it would be good for you to try for briefs, and then probably the other men who want them more might be—cleverer than you are.”
“Oh, very well,” cried Roland, who had taken a chair close to his adviser, springing up with natural indignation; “if it is only by way of mortification, as a moral discipline, that you want me to go in for bar work.”
She put out her hand and laid it on his arm. “Oh, no! it would only be fair competition. Perhaps you would be cleverer than they—than some of them.”
“That’s a very doubtful perhaps,” he cried, with a laugh. But he was mollified and sat down again—the touch was very conciliatory. “The truth is,” he said, getting hold of the hand, which she withdrew very calmly after a moment, “I am in no haste; and,” with timidity, “the truth is, Rosalind, that I shall never do work anyhow by myself. If I had some one with me to stir me up and keep me going, and if I knew it was for her interest as well as for my own—”
“You mean if you were to marry?” said Rosalind, in a matter-of-fact tone, rising from her chair. “I don’t approve of a man who always has to be stirred up by his wife; but marry by all means, Roland, if you think that is the best way. Nobody would have the least objection; in short, I am sure all your best friends would like it, and I, for one, would give her the warmest welcome. But still I should prefer, you know, first to see you acting for yourself. Why, there is the quarter chiming, and I promised to let Saunders know when we went to dress. Aunt Sophy will be down-stairs directly. Ring the bell, and let us run; we shall be late again. But the firelight is so pleasant.” She disappeared out of the room before she had done speaking, flying up-stairs to escape the inevitable response, and left poor Roland, tantalized and troubled, to meet the gloomy looks of Saunders, who reminded him that there was but twelve minutes and a half to dress in, and that Mrs. Lennox was very particular about the fish. Saunders took liberties with the younger visitors, and he too had known young Mr. Hamerton all his life.
