Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER XXIX
It was not on that day, but the next, that Uncle John arrived so suddenly, bringing with him the friend whom he had picked up in Switzerland. This was a man still young, but not so young as Roland Hamerton, with looks a little worn, as of a man who had been, as he himself said, “knocking about the world.” Perhaps, indeed, they all thought afterwards, it was his dress which suggested this idea; for when he appeared dressed for the evening he turned out in reality a handsome man, with the very effective contrast of hair already gray, waving upwards from a countenance not old enough to justify that change, and lighted up with dark eyes full of light and humor and life. The hair which had changed its color so early had evidently been very dark in his youth, and Mrs. Lennox, who was always a little romantic, could not help suggesting, when Rosalind and she awaited the gentlemen in the drawing-room after dinner, that Mr. Rivers might be an example of one of the favorite devices of fiction, the turning gray in a single night, which is a possibility of which every one has heard. “I should not wonder if he has had a very remarkable life,” Aunt Sophy said. “No doubt the servants and common people think him quite old, but when you look into it, it is a young face.” She took her chair by the fireside, and arranged all her little paraphernalia, and unfolded her crewel-work, and had done quite half a leaf before she burst forth again, as if without any interval, “though full of lines, and what you might call wrinkles if you did not know better! In my young days such a man would have been thought like Lara or Conrad, or one of Byron’s other heroes. I don’t know who to compare him to nowadays, for men of that sort are quite out of fashion; but he is quite a hero, I have a conviction, and saved John’s life.”
“He says Uncle John was in no danger, and that he did nothing that a guide or a servant might not have done.”
“My dear,” said Aunt Sophy, “that is what they always say; the more they do the less they will give in to it.”
“To call that old man like the Wandering Jew a hero!” said little Sophy. “Yes, I have seen him. I saw him arrive with Uncle John. He looked quite old and shabby; oh, not a bit like Lara, whose hair was jet-black, and who scowled when he looked at you.”
“Why, how can you tell, you little— Rosalind, I am afraid Miss Robinson must be romantic, for Sophy knows—oh, a great deal more than a little girl ought to know.”
“It was in your room that I found ‘Lara,’” said Sophy, “and the ‘Corsair’ too; I have read them all. Oh, Miss Robinson never reads them; she reads little good books where everybody dies. I do not admire Mr. Rivers at all, and if Uncle John should intend to give him one of us because he has saved his life, I hope it will not be me.”
“Sophy, I shall send you to bed if you talk so. Give him one of you! I suppose you think you are in a fairy tale. Mr. Rivers would laugh if you were offered to him. He would think it was a curious reward.”
“He might like Rosalind better, perhaps, now, but Rosalind has gone off, Aunt Sophy. Ferriss says so. She is getting rather old. Don’t you know she is in her twenty-first year?”
“Rosalind! why, I never saw her looking better in her life. Ferriss shall be sent away if she talks such impertinence. And she is just twenty! Going off! she is not the least going off: her complexion is just beautiful, and so fresh. I don’t know what you mean, you or Ferriss either!” Mrs. Lennox cried. She had always a little inclination to believe what was suggested to her; and, notwithstanding the complete assurance of her words, she followed Rosalind, who was moving about at the other end of the room, with eyes that were full of sudden alarm.
“And I am in my thirteenth year,” said Sophy; “it sounds much better than to say only twelve. I shall improve, but Rosalind will not improve. If he were sensible, he would like me best.”
“Don’t let your sister hear you talk such nonsense, Sophy: and remember that I forbid you to read the books in my room without asking me first. There are things that are very suitable for me, or even for Rosalind, but not for you. And what are you doing down-stairs at this hour, Sophy? I did not remember the hour, but it is past your bedtime. Miss Robinson should not let you have so much of your own way.”
“It was because of Uncle John,” said Rosalind. “What has she been saying about Lara and the Corsair? I could not hear, Saunders made so much noise with the tea. Here is your tea, Aunt Sophy, though you know Dr. Beaton says you ought not to take it after dinner, and that it keeps you from sleeping.”
“Dr. Beaton goes upon the new-fashioned rules, my dear,” said Mrs. Lennox. “It never keeps me from my sleep; nothing does that, thank God. It is the young people that are so delicate nowadays, that can’t take this and that. I wonder if John has any news of Dr. Beaton. He had a great many fads like that about the tea, but he was very nice. What a comfort he was to poor Reginald, and took so much anxiety off Gra—”
“I declare,” Aunt Sophy cried, coloring and coughing, “I have caught cold, though I have not been out of the house since the cold weather set in. My dear, I am so sorry,” she added in an undertone; “I know I should not have said a word—”
“I have never been of that opinion,” said Rosalind, shaking her head sadly. “I think you are all taking the wrong way.”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t say a word, Rosalind; with John coming in, and that little thing with ears as sharp—”
“Is it me that have ears so sharp, Aunt Sophy? It is funny to hear you talk. You think I don’t know anything, but I know everything. I know why Roland Hamerton is always coming here; and I know why Mr. Blake never comes, but only the old gentleman. And, Rosalind, you had better make up your mind and take some one, for you are getting quite passée, and you will soon be an old maid.”
“Sophy! if you insult your sister—”
“Do you think that is insulting me?” Rosalind said. “I believe I shall be an old maid. That would suit me best, and it would be best for the children, who will want me for a long time.”
“My dear,” said Aunt Sophy, solemnly, “there are some things I will never consent to, and one of them is, a girl like you making such a sacrifice. That is what I will never give in to. Oh, go away, Sophy, you are a perfect nuisance! No, no, I will never give in to it. For such a sacrifice is always repented of. When the children grow up they will not be a bit grateful to you; they will never think it was for them you did it. They will talk of you as if it was something laughable, and as if you could not help it. An old maid! Yes, it is intended for an insult, and I won’t have it, any more than I will have you do it, Rosalind.”
“Oh, Uncle John,” cried the enfant terrible, “there is Aunt Sophy with tears in her eyes because I said Rosalind was going to be an old maid. But it is not anything so very dreadful, is it? Why, Uncle John, you are an old maid.”
“I don’t think Rosalind’s prospects need distress you, Sophy,” said Uncle John. “We can take care of her in any case. She will not want your valuable protection.”
“Oh, I was not thinking of myself; I don’t mind at all,” said Sophy; “but only she is getting rather old. Don’t you see a great difference, Uncle John? She is in her twenty-first year.”
“I shall not lose hope till she has completed her thirty-third,” said Uncle John. “You may run away, Sophy; you are young enough, fortunately, to be sent to bed.”
“I am in my thirteenth,” said Sophy, resisting every step of her way to the door, dancing in front of her uncle, who was directing her towards it. When Sophy found that resistance was vain, she tried entreaty.
“Oh, Uncle John, don’t send me away! Rosalind promised I should sit up to-night because you were coming home.”
“Then Rosalind must take the consequences,” said John Trevanion. All this time the stranger had been standing silent, with a slight smile on his face, watching the whole party, and forming those unconscious conclusions with which we settle everybody’s character and qualities when we come into a new place. This little skirmish was all in his favor, as helping him to a comprehension of the situation; the saucy child, the indulgent old aunt, the disapproving guardian, of whom alone Sophy was a little afraid, made a simple group enough. But when he turned to the subject of the little disturbance, he found in Rosalind’s smile a curious light thrown upon the altercation. Was she in real danger of becoming an old maid? He thought her looking older than the child had said, a more gracious and perfect woman than was likely to be the subject of such a controversy; and he saw, by the eager look and unnecessary indignation of Hamerton, sufficient evidence that the fate of the elder sister was by no means so certain as Sophy thought, and that, at all events, it was in her own hands. The young fellow had seemed to Mr. Rivers a pleasant young fellow enough in the after-dinner talk, but when he thus involuntarily coupled him with Rosalind, his opinion changed in a curious way. The young man was not good enough for her. A touch of indignation mingled, he could not tell why, in this conclusion; indignation against unconscious Roland, who aspired to one so much above him, and at the family who were so little aware that this girl was the only one of them the least remarkable. He smiled at himself afterwards for the earnestness with which he decided all this; settling the character of people whom he had never seen before in so unjustifiable a fashion. The little new world thus revealed to him had nothing very novel in it. The only interesting figure was the girl who was in her twenty-first year. She was good enough for the heroine of a romance of a higher order than any that could be involved in the mild passion of young Hamerton; and it pleased the stranger to think, from the unconcerned way in which Rosalind looked at her admirer, that she was evidently of this opinion too.
“Rosalind,” said John Trevanion, after the episode of Sophy was over, and she was safely dismissed to bed, “will you show Rivers the miniatures? He is a tremendous authority on art.”
“Bring the little lamp then, Uncle John; there is not light enough. We are very proud of them ourselves, but if Mr. Rivers is a great authority, perhaps they will not please him so much.”
She took up the lamp herself as she spoke, and its light gave a soft illumination to her face, looking up at him with a smile. It was certain that there was nothing so interesting here as she was. The miniatures! well, yes, they were not bad miniatures. He suggested a name as the painter of the best among them which pleased John Trevanion, and fixed the date in a way which fell in entirely with family traditions. Perhaps he would not have been so gracious had the exhibitor been less interesting. He took the lamp, which she had insisted upon holding, out of her hand when the inspection was done, and set it down upon a table which was at some distance from the fireside group. It was a writing-table, with indications upon it of the special ownership of Rosalind. But this he could not be supposed to know. He thought it would be pleasant, however, to detain her here in conversation, apart from the others who were so much more ordinary, for he was a man who liked to appropriate to himself the best of everything. And fortune favored his endeavors. As he put down the lamp his eye was caught by a photograph framed in a sort of shrine, which stood upon the table. The doors of the little shrine were open, and he stooped to look at the face within, at the sight of which he uttered an exclamation. “I know that lady very well,” he said.
In a moment the courteous attention which Rosalind had been giving him turned into eager interest. She made a hurried step forward, clasped her hands together, and raised to him eyes which all at once had filled with sudden tragic meaning, anxiety, and suspense. If there had seemed to him before much more in her than in any of the others, there was a hundredfold more now. He seemed in a moment to have got at the very springs of her life. “Oh, where, where have you seen her? When did you see her? Tell me all you know,” Rosalind cried. She turned to him, betraying in her every gesture an excess of suddenly awakened feeling, and waited breathless, repeating her inquiry with her eyes.
“I was afraid, from the way in which her portrait was framed, that perhaps she was no longer—”
Rosalind gave a low cry, following the very movements of his lips with her eager eyes. Then she exclaimed, “No, no, she must be living, or we should have heard.”
“What is it, Rosalind?” said John Trevanion, looking somewhat pale and anxious too, as he turned round to join them.
“Uncle John, Mr. Rivers knows her. He is going to tell me something.”
“But really I have nothing to tell, Miss Trevanion. I fear I have excited your interest on false pretences. It is such an interesting face—so beautiful in its way.”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
“I met the lady last year in Spain. I cannot say that I know her, though I said so in the surprise of the moment. One could not see her without being struck with her appearance.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” Rosalind cried again, eagerly, with her eyes demanding more.
“I met her several times. They were travelling out of the usual routes. I have exchanged a few chance words with her at the door of a hotel, or on the road, changing horses. I am sorry to say that was all, Miss Trevanion.”
“Last year; that is later than we have heard. And was she well? Was she very sad? Did she say anything? But, oh, how could she say anything? for she could not tell,” cried Rosalind, her eyes filling, “that you were coming here.”
“Hush, Rosalind. You say they, Rivers. She was not alone, then?”
“Alone? oh, no, there was a man with her. I never could,” said Rivers, lightly, “make out who he was—more like a son or brother than her husband. But, to be sure, you who know the lady—”
He paused, entirely unable to account for the effect he had produced. Rosalind had grown as pale as marble; her mouth quivered, her hands trembled. She gave him the most pathetic, reproachful look, as a woman might have done whom he had stabbed unawares, and, getting up quickly from his side, went away with an unsteady, wavering movement, as if it were all her strength could do to get out of the room. Hamerton rushed forward to open the door for her, but he was too late, and he too came to look at Rivers with inquiring, indignant looks, as if to say, What have you done to her? “What have I done—what is wrong, Trevanion? Have I said anything I ought not to have said?” Rivers cried.
The only answer John Trevanion made was to drop down upon the seat Rosalind had left, with a suppressed groan, and to cover his face with his hands.
CHAPTER XXX
Rosalind came down to breakfast next morning at the usual hour. She was the most important member of the household party, and everything depended upon her. Sometimes Aunt Sophy would have a little cold and did not appear. She considered it was her right to take her leisure in the mornings; but Rosalind was like the mother of the young ones, and indispensable. Rivers had come down early, which is an indiscreet thing for a stranger to do in a house with which he is unacquainted. He felt this when Rosalind came into the breakfast-room, and found Sophy, full of excitement and delight in thus taking the most important place, entertaining him. He thought Rosalind looked at him with a sort of question in her eyes, which she turned away the next moment; but afterwards put force upon herself and came up to him, bidding him good-morning. He was so much interested that he felt he could follow the processes in her mind; that she reproved herself for her distaste to him, and said within herself, it is no fault of his. He did not yet at all know what he had done, but conjectured that the woman whose photograph was on Rosalind’s table must be some dear friend or relation who had either made an imprudent marriage, or, still worse, “gone wrong.” It was the mention of the man who had been with her which had done all the mischief. He wished that he had bitten his tongue rather than made that unfortunate disclosure, which evidently had plunged them into trouble. But then, how was he to know? As for Rosalind, her pain was increased and complicated by finding this new visitor with the children; Sophy, her eyes dancing with excitement and pleasure, doing her utmost to entertain him. Sophy had that complete insensibility which is sometimes to be seen in a clever child whose satisfaction with her own cleverness overbalances all feeling. She was just as likely as not to have poured forth all the family history into this new-comer’s ears; to have let him know that mamma had gone away when papa died, and that nobody knew where she had gone. This gave Rosalind an additional alarm, but overcame her repugnance to address the stranger who had brought news so painful, for it was better at once to check Sophy’s revelations, whatever they might have been. That lively little person turned immediately upon her sister, knowing by instinct that her moment of importance was over. “What a ghost you do look, Rosie!” she cried; “you look as if you had been crying. Just as I do when Miss Robinson is nasty. But nobody can scold you except Aunt Sophy, and she never does; though—oh, I forgot, there is Uncle John.”
“Miss Robinson will be here before you are ready for her, Sophy,” said Rosalind. “I fear I am a little late. Has she been giving you the carte du pays, Mr. Rivers? She is more fond of criticism than little girls should be.”
“I have had a few sketches of the neighborhood,” he answered quickly, divining her fears. “She is an excellent mimic, I should suppose, but it is rather a dangerous quality. If you take me off, Miss Sophy, as you take off the old ladies, I shall not enjoy it.”
Rosalind was relieved, he could see. She gave him a look that was almost grateful as she poured out his coffee, though he had done nothing to call forth her gratitude, any more than he had done anything last night to occasion her sorrow. A stranger in a new household, of which he has heard nothing before, being introduced into it, is like an explorer in an unknown country; he does not know when he may find himself on forbidden ground, or intruding into religious mysteries. He began to talk of himself, which seemed the safest subject; it was one which he was not eager to launch upon, but yet which had come in handy on many previous occasions. His life had been full of adventures. There were a hundred things in it to tell, and it had delivered him from many a temporary embarrassment to introduce a chapter out of his varied experiences. He had shot elephants in Africa and tigers in India. He had been a war-correspondent in the height of every military movement. “I have been one of the rolling stones that gather no moss,” he said, “though it is a kind of moss to have so many stories to tell. If the worst comes to the worst, I can go from house to house and amuse the children.” He did it so skilfully that Rosalind felt her agitation calmed. A man who could fall so easily into this narrative vein, and who was, apparently, so full of his own affairs, would not think twice, she reflected, of such a trifling incident as that of last night. If she had judged more truly, she would perhaps have seen that the observer who thus dismissed the incident totally, with such an absence of all consciousness on the subject, was precisely the one most likely to have perceived, even if he did not understand how, that it was an incident of great importance. But Rosalind was not sufficiently learned in moral philosophy to have found out that.
Her feelings were not so carefully respected by Roland Hamerton, who would have given everything he had in the world to please her, but yet was not capable of perceiving what, in this matter at least, was the right way to do so. He had, though he was not one of the group round the writing-table, heard enough to understand what had happened on the previous night, solely, it would seem, by that strange law which prevails in human affairs, by which the obstacles of distance and the rules of acoustics are set aside as soon as something is going on which it is undesirable for the spectators to hear. In this way Hamerton had made out what it was; that Madam had been seen by the stranger, travelling with a man. Rosalind’s sudden departure from the room, her face of anguish, the speed with which she disappeared, and the confused looks of those whom she thus hastily left, roused young Hamerton to something like the agitation into which he had been plunged by the incidents of that evening, now so long past, when Madam Trevanion had appeared in the drawing-room at Highcourt with that guilty witness of her nocturnal expedition clinging to her dress. He had been then almost beside himself with the painful nature of the discovery which he had made. What should he do—keep the knowledge to himself, or communicate it to those who had a right to know? Roland was so unaccustomed to deal with difficulties of this kind that he had felt it profoundly, and at the end had held his peace, rather because it was the easiest thing to do than from any better reason. It returned to his mind now, with all the original trouble and perception of a duty which he could not define. Here was Rosalind, the most perfect, the sweetest, the girl whom he loved, wasting her best affections upon a woman who was unworthy of them; standing by her, defending her, insisting even upon respect and honor for her—and suffering absolute anguish, such as he had seen last night, when the veil was lifted for a moment from that mysterious darkness of intrigue and shame into which she had disappeared. If she only knew and could be convinced that Madam had been unworthy all the time, would not that deliver her? Roland thought that he was able to prove this; he had never wavered in his own judgment. All his admiration and regard for Mrs. Trevanion had been killed at a blow by the shock he had received, by what he had seen. He could not bear to think that such a woman should retain Rosalind’s affection. And he thought he had it in his power to convince Rosalind, to make her see everything in its true light. This conviction was not come to without pain. The idea of opening such a subject at all, of speaking of what was impure and vile in Rosalind’s hearing, of looking in her eyes, which knew no evil, and telling her such a tale, was terrible to the young man. But yet he thought it ought to be done. Certainly it ought to be done. Had she seen what he had seen, did she know what he knew, she would give up at once that championship which she had held so warmly. It had always been told him that though men might forgive a woman who had fallen, no woman ever did so; and how must an innocent girl, ignorant, incredulous of all evil, feel towards one who had thus sinned? What could she do but flee from her in terror, in horror, with a condemnation which would be all the more relentless, remorseless, from her own incapacity to understand either the sin or the temptation? But no doubt it would be a terrible shock to Rosalind. This was the only thing that held him back. It would be a blow which would shake the very foundations of her being: for she could not suspect, she could not even know of what Madam was suspected, or she would never stand by her so. Now, however, that her peace had been disturbed by this chance incident, there was a favorable opportunity for Roland. It was his duty now, he thought, to strike to the root of her fallacy. It was better for her that she should be entirely undeceived.
Thinking about this, turning it over and over in his mind, had cost him almost his night’s rest: not altogether. If the world itself had gone to pieces, Roland would still have got a few hours’ repose. He allowed to himself that he had got a few hours, but, as a matter of fact, he had been thinking of this the last thing when he went to sleep, and it was the first thing that occurred to him when he awoke. The frost had given way, but he said to himself that he would not hunt that day. He would go on to the Elms; he would manage somehow to see Rosalind by herself, and he would have it out. If in her pain her heart was softened, and she was disposed to turn to him for sympathy, then he could have it all out, and so get a little advantage out of his anxiety for her good. Indeed, she had snubbed him yesterday and made believe that she did not know who it was he wanted for his companion and guide; but that was nothing. Girls did so, he had often heard—staved off a proposal when they knew it was coming, even though they did not mean to reject it when it came. That was nothing. But when she was in trouble, when her heart was moved, who could say that she would not cling to him for sympathy? And there was nobody that could sympathize with her as he could. He pictured to himself how he would draw her close to him, and bid her cry as much as she liked on his faithful bosom. That faithful bosom heaved with a delicious throb. He would not mind her crying; she might cry us long as she pleased—there.
And, as it happened, by a chance which seemed to Roland providential, he found Rosalind alone when he entered the drawing-room at the Elms. Mrs. Lennox had taken Sophy with her in the carriage to the dentist at Clifton; Roland felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Sophy, that little imp of mischief, was going to have a tooth drawn. The gentlemen were out, and Miss Rosalind was alone. Roland could have hugged Saunders for this information; he gave him a sovereign, which pleased the worthy man much better, and flew three steps at a time up-stairs. Rosalind was seated by her writing-table. It subdued him at once to see her attitude. She had been crying already. She had not waited for the faithful bosom. And he thought that when she was disturbed by the opening of the door, she had closed the little gates of that carved shrine in which Madam’s picture dwelt; otherwise she did not move when she saw who her visitor was, but nodded to him, with relief, he thought. “Is it you, Roland? I thought you were sure to be out to-day,” she said.
“No, I didn’t go out. I hadn’t the heart.” He came and sat down by her where she had made Rivers sit the previous night; she looked up at him with a little surprise.
“Hadn’t the heart! What is the matter, Roland? Have you had bad news—is there anything wrong at home?”
“No—nothing about my people. Rosalind, I haven’t slept a wink all night”—which was exaggeration, the reader knows—“thinking about you.”
“About me!” She smiled, then blushed a little, and then made an attempt to recover the composure with which yesterday she had so calmly ignored his attempts at love-making. “I don’t see why you should lose your sleep about me; was it a little toothache—perhaps neuralgia? I know you are sometimes subject to that.”
“Rosalind,” he said, solemnly, “you must not laugh at me to-day. It is nothing to laugh at. I could not help hearing what that fellow said last night.”
The color ebbed away out of Rosalind’s face, but not the courage. “Yes!” she said, half affirmation, half interrogation; “that he had met mamma abroad.”
“I can’t bear to hear you call her mamma. And it almost killed you to hear what he said.”
She did not make any attempt to defend herself, but grew whiter, as if she would faint, and her mouth quivered again. “Well,” she said, “I do not deny that—that I was startled. Her dear name, that alone is enough to agitate me, and to hear of her like that without warning, in a moment.”
The tears rose to her eyes, but she still looked him in the face, though she scarcely saw him through that mist.
“Well,” she said again—she took some time to master herself before she was able to speak—“if I did feel it very much, that was not wonderful. I was taken by surprise. For the first moment, just in the confusion, knowing what wickedness people think, I—I—lost heart altogether. It was too dreadful and miserable, but I was not very well, I suppose. I am not going to shirk it at all, Roland. She was travelling with a gentleman—well! and what then?”
“Oh, Rosalind!” he cried, with a sort of horror, “after that, can you stand up for her still?”
“I don’t know what there is to stand up for. My mother is not a girl like me. She is the best judge of what is right. When I had time to think, that became a matter of course, as plain as daylight.”
“And you don’t mind?” he said.
She turned upon him something of the same look which she had cast on Rivers, a look of anguish and pathos, reproachful, yet with a sort of tremulous smile.
“Oh, Rosalind,” he cried, “I can’t bear to look at you like that. I can’t bear to see you so deceived. I’ll tell you what I saw myself. Nobody was more fond of Madam than I. I’d have gone to the stake for her. But that night—that night, if you remember, when the thorn was hanging to her dress, I had gone away into the conservatory because I couldn’t bear to hear your father going on. Rosalind, just hear out what I have got to say. And there I saw—oh, saw! with my own eyes— I saw her standing—with a man— I saw them part, he going away into the shadow of the shrubbery, she—Rosalind!”
She had risen up, and stood towering (as he felt) over him, as if she had grown to double her height in a moment. “Do you tell me this,” she said, steadying herself with an effort, moistening her lips between her words to be able to speak—“do you tell me this to make me love you, or hate you?”
“Rosalind, to undeceive you, that you may know the truth.”
“Go away!” she said. She pointed with her arm to the door. “Go away! It is not the truth. If it were the truth, I should never forgive you, I should never speak to you again. But it is not the truth. Go away!”
“Rosalind!”
“Must I put you out,” she cried, in the passion which now and then overcame her, stamping her foot upon the floor, “with my own hands?”
