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Madam
“Nor any one,” he repeated; “that is enough. And you will think of me when I am away, and if I come back, I may come and ask? All this I will accept on my knees, and, at present, ask for no more.”
“But you must not expect—you must not make sure of—when you come back—”
“I will wait upon Providence and my good angel, Rosalind!”
“What are you saying, Mr. Rivers, about angels and Rosalind? Do you call her by her name, and do you think she is an angel? That is how people talk in novels; I have read a great many. Why, you have got no flowers! What have you been doing all this time? I made Aunt Sophy send me to help you with the cactuses, and Uncle John said, ‘Well, perhaps it will be better.’ But, oh, what idle things you are! The cactuses are not here even. You look as if you had forgotten all about them, Rose.”
“We knew you were sure to come, and waited for you,” said Rivers; “that is to say, I did. I knew you were sure to follow. Here, Sophy, you and I will go for the cactuses, and Miss Trevanion will sit down and wait for us. Don’t you think that is the best way?”
“You call her Miss Trevanion now, but you called her Rosalind when I was not here. Oh, and I know you don’t care a bit for the flowers: you wanted only to talk to her when Uncle John and Aunt Sophy were out of the way.”
“Don’t you think that was natural, Sophy? You are a wise little girl. You are very fond of Uncle John and Aunt Sophy, but still now and then you like to get away for a time, and tell your secrets.”
“Were you telling your secrets to Rosalind? I am not very fond of them. I like to see what is going on, and to find people out.”
“Shall I give you something to find out for me while I am away?”
“Oh, yes, yes, do; that is what I should like,” cried Sophy, with her little mischievous eyes dancing. “And I will write and tell you. But then you must give me your address; I shall be the only one in the house that knows your address; and I’ll tell you what they are all doing, every one of them. There is nothing I should like so much,” Sophy cried. She was so pleased with this idea that she forgot to ask what the special information required by her future correspondent was.
Meanwhile Rosalind sat among the flowers, hearing the distant sound of their voices, with her heart beating and all the color and brightness round flickering unsteadily in her eyes. She did not know what she had done, or if she had done anything; if she had pledged herself, or if she were still free.
CHAPTER XXXV
It happened after these events that sickness crept into Mrs. Lennox’s cheerful house. One of the children had a lingering fever; and Aunt Sophy herself was troubled with headaches, and not up to the mark, the doctor said. This no doubt arose, according to the infallible decrees of sanitary science, from some deficiency in the drainage, notwithstanding that a great deal of trouble had already been taken, and that a local functionary and expert in such matters had been almost resident in the house for some months, to set right these sources of all evil. As soon, however, as it was understood that for the sixth or seventh time the house would have to be undermined, Mrs. Lennox came to a resolution which, as she said, she had “always intended;” and that was to “go abroad.” To go abroad is a thing which recommends itself to most women as an infallible mode of procuring pleasure. They may not like it when they are there. Foreign “ways” may be a weariness to their souls, and foreign languages a series of unholy mysteries which they do not attempt to fathom; but going abroad is a panacea for all dulness and a good many maladies. The Englishwoman of simple mind is sure that she will be warmed and soothed, that the sun will always shine, the skies never rain, and everything go to her wish “abroad.” She returns discontented; but she goes away always hopeful, scarcely able to conceive that gray skies and cold winds prevail anywhere except in her own island. Mrs. Lennox was of this simple-minded order. When she was driven to the depths of her recollection she could, indeed, remember a great many instances to the contrary, but in the abstract she felt that these were accidents, and, the likelihood was, would never occur again. And then it would be so good for the children! They would learn languages without knowing, without any trouble at all. With this happy persuasion English families every day convey their hapless babes into the depths of Normandy, for example, to learn French. Mrs. Lennox went to the Riviera, as was inevitable, and afterwards to other places, thinking it as well, as she said, while they were abroad, to see as much as possible. It was no small business to get the little caravansary under way, and when it was accomplished it may be doubted how much advantage it was to the children for whose good, according to Aunt Sophy, the journey was prolonged. Little Amy and Johnny wandered with big eyes after the nurse who had replaced Russell, through Rome and Florence, and gazed alarmed at the towers of Bologna, which the children thought were falling upon them, without deriving very much instruction from the sight.
It was a thoroughly English party, like many another, carrying its own little atmosphere about it and all its insular customs. The first thing they did on arriving at a new place was to establish a little England in the foreign hotel or chambres garnies which they occupied. The sitting-room at the inn took at once a kind of faux air of the dining-room at the Elms, Mrs. Lennox’s work and her basket of crewels and her footstool being placed in the usual exact order, and a writing-table arranged for the family letters in the same light as that approved at home. And then there were elaborate arrangements for the nursery dinner at a proper nursery hour, and for roast mutton and rice pudding, such as were fit food for British subjects of the age of nine and seven. Then the whereabouts of the English church was inquired into, and the English chemist, and the bookshop where English books, and especially the editions of Baron Tauchnitz, and perhaps English newspapers, might be had. Having ascertained all this, and to the best of her power obliterated all difference between Cannes, or Genoa, or Florence, or even Rome, and the neighborhood of Clifton, Mrs. Lennox began to enjoy herself in a mild way. She took her daily drive, and looked at the Italians from her carriage with a certain disapproval, much curiosity, and sometimes amusement. She disapproved of them because they were not English, in a general way. She was too sweet-tempered to conclude, as some of the ladies did whom she met at the hotel, that they were universally liars, cheats, and extortioners; but they were not English; though, perhaps, poor things, that was not exactly their fault.
This was how she travelled, and in a sober way enjoyed it. She thought the Riviera very pretty, if there were not so many sick people about; and Florence very pretty too. “But I have been here before, you know, my dear,” she said; therefore her admiration was calm, and never rose into any of the raptures with which Rosalind sometimes was roused by a new landscape. She lived just as she would have done if she had never stirred from home, and was moderately happy, as happy as a person of her age has any right to be. The children came to her at the same hours, they had their dinner and walk at the same hours, and they all went to church on Sunday just in the same way. The table d’hôte, at which she usually dined with Rosalind, was the only difference of importance between her life as a traveller and her life at home. She thought it was rather like a dinner-party without the trouble, and as she soon got to know a select little “set” of English of her own condition in her hotel, and sat with them, the public table grew more and more like a private one, except in so far as that all the guests had the delightful privilege of finding fault. The clergyman called upon her, and made little appeals to her for deserving cases, and pleaded that Rosalind should help in the music, and talked the talk of a small parish to her contented ears. All this made her very much at home, while still enjoying the gentle excitement of being abroad. And at the end of six months Mrs. Lennox began to feel that she was quite a cosmopolitan, able to adapt herself to all circumstances, and getting the full good of foreign travel, which, as she declared she was doing it entirely for the children, was a repayment of her goodness upon which she had not calculated. “I feel quite a woman of the world,” was what Aunt Sophy said.
Perhaps, however, Rosalind, placed as she was between the children and their guardian, neither too old nor too young for such enjoyment, was, as lawyers say, the true beneficiary. She had the disadvantage of visiting a great many places of interest with companions who did not appreciate or understand them, it is true; with Aunt Sophy, who thought that the pictures as well as the views were pretty; and with the sharp little sister who thought picture-galleries and mountain landscapes equally a bore. But, notwithstanding, with that capacity for separating herself from her surroundings which belongs to the young, Rosalind was able to get a great deal of enjoyment as she moved along in Mrs. Lennox’s train. Aunts in general are not expected to care for scenery; they care for being comfortable, for getting their meals, and especially the children’s meals, at the proper time, and being as little disturbed in their ordinary routine as possible. When this is fully granted, a girl can usually manage to get a good deal of pleasure under their portly shadow. Rosalind saw everything as if nobody had ever seen it before; the most hackneyed scenes were newly created for her, and came upon her with a surprise almost more delightful than anything in life, certainly more delightful than anything that did not immediately concern the heart and affections. She thought, indeed, sometimes wistfully, that if it had been her mother, that never-to-be-forgotten and always trusted friend, who could have understood everything and felt with her, and added a charm wherever they went, the enjoyment would have been far greater. But then her heart would fall into painful questions as to where and with what companions that friend might now be, and rise into prayers, sometimes that they might meet to-morrow, sometimes that they might never meet—that nothing which could diminish her respect and devotion should ever be made known to her. Then, too, sometimes Rosalind would ask herself, in the leisure of her solitude, what this journey might have been had some one else been of the party? This some one else was not Roland Hamerton: that was certain. She could not say to herself, either, that it was Arthur Rivers. It was—well, some one with great eyes, dark and liquid, whose power of vision would be more refined, more educated than that of Rosalind, who would know all the associations and all the poetry, and make everything that was beautiful before more beautiful by the charm of his superior knowledge. Perhaps she felt, too, that it was more modest, more maidenly, to allow a longing for the companionship of one whom she did not know, who was a mere ideal, the symbol of love, or genius, or poetry, she did not know which, than to wish in straightforward terms for the lover whom she knew, who was a man, and not a symbol. Her imagination was too shy, too proud, to summon up an actual person, substantial and well known. It was more easy and simple, more possible, to fill that fancy with an image that had no actual embodiment, and to call to her side the being who was nothing more than a recollection, whose very name and everything about him was unknown to her. She accepted him as a symbol of all that a dreaming girl desires in a companion. He was a dream; there need be no bounds to the enthusiasm, the poetry, the fine imagination, with which she endowed him, any more than there need be to the devotion to herself, which was a mere dream also. He might woo her as men only woo in the imagination of girls, so delicately, so tenderly, with such ethereal worship. How different the most glorious road would be were he beside her! though in reality he was beside her all the way, saying things which were finer than anything but fancy, breathing the very soul of rapture into her being. The others knew nothing of all this; how should they? And Mrs. Lennox, for one, sometimes asked herself whether Rosalind was really enjoying her travels. “She says so little,” that great authority said.
There was, however, little danger that she should forget one, at least, of her actual lovers. In the meantime a great deal had been going on in the world, and especially in that distant part of it to which Rivers had gone. The little war which he had gone to report had turned into a most exciting and alarming one; and there had been days in which the whole world, so to speak—all England at least, and her dependencies—had hung upon his utterance, and looked for his communications every morning almost before they looked at those which came from their nearest and dearest. And it was said that he had excelled himself in these communications. He had done things which were heroic, if not to hasten the conclusion of the war, to make it successful, yet at least to convey the earliest intelligence of any new action, and to make people at home feel as if they were present upon the very field, spectators of all the movements there.
This service involved him in as much danger as if he had been in the very front of the fighting; and, indeed, he was known to have done feats, for what is called the advantage of the public, to which the stand made by a mere soldier, even in the most urgent circumstances, was not to be compared. All this was extremely interesting, not to say exciting, to his friends. Mrs. Lennox had the paper sent after her wherever she travelled; and, indeed, it was great part of her day’s occupation to read it, which she did with devotion. “The correspondent is a friend of ours,” she said to the other English people in the hotels. “We know him, I may say, very well, and naturally I take a great interest.” The importance of his position as the author of those letters which interested everybody, and even the familiar way in which he talked of generals and commanders-in-chief, impressed her profoundly. As for Rosalind, she said nothing, but she, too, read all about the war with an attention which was breathless, not quite sure in her mind that it was not under a general’s helmet that those crisp locks of gray were curling, or that the vivid eyes which had looked into hers with such expression were not those of the hero of the campaign. It did not seem possible, somehow, that he could be less than a general. She took the paper to her room in the evening, when Aunt Sophy had done with it, and read and read. The charm was upon her that moved Desdemona, and it was difficult to remember that the teller of the tale was not the chief mover in it. How could she help but follow him in his wanderings wherever he went? It was the least thing she could do in return for what he had given to her—for that passion which had made her tremble—which she wondered at and admired as if it had been poetry. All this captivated the girl’s fancy in spite of herself, and gave her an extraordinary interest in everything he said, and that was said of him. But, notwithstanding, it was not Mr. Rivers who accompanied her in the spirit on all the journeys she made, and to all the beautiful places which filled her with rapture. Not Mr. Rivers—a visionary person, one whose very name was to her unknown.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The events of the night on which Mrs. Trevanion left Highcourt had at this period of the family story fallen into that softened oblivion which covers the profoundest scars of the heart after a certain passage of time, except sometimes to the chief actor in such scenes, who naturally takes a longer period to forget.
She on whom the blow had fallen at a moment when she was unprepared for it, when a faint sense of security had begun to steal over her in spite of herself, had received it en plein cœur, as the French say. We have no word which expresses so well the unexpected, unmitigated shock. She had said to herself, like the captive king in the Bible, that the bitterness of death was past, and had gone, like that poor prince, “delicately,” with undefended bosom, and heart hushed out of its first alarms, to meet her fate. The blow had gone through her very flesh, rending every delicate tissue before she had time to think. It does not even seem a metaphor to say that it broke her heart, or, rather, cut the tender structure sheer in two, leaving it bleeding, quivering, in her bosom. She was not a woman to faint or die at a stroke. She took the torture silently, without being vanquished by it. When nature is strong within us, and the force of life great, there is no pang spared. And while in one sense it was true that for the moment she expected nothing, the instantly following sensation in Madam’s mind was that she had known all along what was going to happen to her, and that it had never been but certain that this must come. Even the details of the scene seemed familiar. She had always known that some time or other these men would look at her so, would say just those words to her, and that she would stand and bear it all, a victim appointed from the beginning. In the greater miseries of life it happens often that the catastrophe, however unexpected, bears, when it comes, a familiar air, as of a thing which has been mysteriously rehearsed in our consciousness all our lives. After the first shock, her mind sprang with a bound to those immediate attempts to find a way of existence on the other side of the impossible, which was the first impulse of the vigorous soul. She said little even to Jane until the dreary afternoon was over, the dinner, with its horrible formulas, and she had said what was really her farewell to everything at Highcourt. Then, when the time approached for the meeting in the park, she began to prepare for going out with a solemnity which startled her faithful attendant. She took from her desk a sum which she had kept in reserve (who can tell for what possibility?), and dressed herself carefully, not in her new mourning, with all its crape, but in simple black from head to foot. She always had worn a great deal of black lace; it had been her favorite costume always. She enveloped herself in a great veil which would have fallen almost to her feet had it been unfolded, doing everything for herself, seeking the things she wanted in her drawers with a silent diligence which Jane watched with consternation. At last the maid could restrain herself no longer.
“Am I to do nothing for you?” she cried, with anguish. “And, oh! where are you going? What are you doing? There’s something more than I thought.”
“You are to do everything for me, Jane,” her mistress said, with a pathetic smile. “You are to be my sole companion all the rest of my life—unless, if it is not too late, that poor boy.”
“Madam,” Jane said, putting her hand to her heart with a natural tragic movement, “you are not going to desert—the children? Oh, no! you are not thinking of leaving the children?”
Her mistress put her hands upon Jane’s shoulders, clutching her, and gave vent to a low laugh more terrible than any cry. “It is more wonderful than that—more wonderful—more, ah, more ridiculous. Don’t cry. I can’t bear it. They have sent me away. Their father—has sent me away!”
“Madam!” Jane’s shriek would have rung through the house had it not been for Madam’s imperative gesture and the hand she placed upon her mouth.
“Not a word! Not a word! I have not told you before, for I cannot bear a word. It is true, and nothing can be done. Dress yourself now, and put what we want for the night in your bag. I will take nothing. Oh, that is a small matter, a very small matter, to provide all that will be wanted for two poor women. Do you remember, Jane, how we came here?”
“Oh, well, well, Madam. You a beautiful bride, and nothing too much for you, nothing good enough for you.”
“Yes, Jane; but leaving my duty behind me. And now it is repaid.”
“Oh, Madam, Madam! He was too young to know the loss; and it was for his own sake. And besides, if that were all, it’s long, long ago—long, long ago.”
Mrs. Trevanion’s hands dropped by her side. She turned away with another faint laugh of tragic mockery. “It is long, long ago; long enough to change everything. Ah, not so long ago but that he remembers it, Jane. And now the time is come when I am free, if I can, to make it up. I have always wondered if the time would ever come when I could try to make it up.”
“Madam, you have never failed to him, except in not having him with you.”
“Except in all that was my duty, Jane. He has known no home, no care, no love. Perhaps now, if it should not be too late—”
And then she resumed her preparations with that concentrated calm of despair which sometimes apes ordinary composure so well as to deceive the lookers-on. Jane could not understand what was her lady’s meaning. She followed her about with anxious looks, doing nothing on her own part to aid, paralyzed by the extraordinary suggestion. Madam was fully equipped before Jane had stirred, except to follow wistfully every step Mrs. Trevanion took.
“Are you not coming?” she said at length. “Am I to go alone? For the first time in our lives do you mean to desert me, Jane?”
“Madam,” cried the woman, “it cannot be—it cannot be! You must be dreaming; we cannot go without the children.” She stood wringing her hands, beyond all capacity of comprehension, thinking her mistress mad or criminal, or under some great delusion—she could not tell which.
Mrs. Trevanion looked at her with strained eyes that were past tears. “Why,” she said, “why—did you not say so seventeen years ago, Jane?”
“Oh, Madam,” cried Jane, seizing her mistress by the hands, “don’t do it another time! They are all so young, they want you. It can’t do them any good, but only harm, if you go away. Oh, Madam, listen to me that loves you. Who have I but you in the world? But don’t leave them. Oh, don’t we both know the misery it brings? You may be doing it thinking it will make up. But God don’t ask these kind of sacrifices,” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. “He don’t ask it. He says, mind your duty now, whatever’s been done in the past. Don’t try to be making up for it, the Lord says, Madam; but just do your duty now; it’s all that we can do.”
Mrs. Trevanion listened to this address, which was made with streaming eyes and a face quivering with emotion, in silence. She kept her eyes fixed on Jane’s face as if the sight of the tears was a refreshment to her parched soul. Her own eyes were dry, with that smile in them which answers at some moments in place of weeping.
“You cut me to the heart,” she said, “every word. Oh, but I am not offering God any vain sacrifices, thinking to atone. He has taken it into his own hand. Life repeats itself, though we never think so. What I did once for my own will God makes me do over again not of my own will. He has his meaning clear through all, but I don’t know what it is, I cannot fathom it.” She said this quickly, with the settled quietness of despair. Then, the lines of her countenance melting, her eyes lit up with a forlorn entreaty, as she touched Jane on the shoulder, and asked, “Are you coming? You will not let me go alone—”
“Oh, Madam, wherever you go—wherever you go! I have never done anything but follow you. I can neither live nor die without you,” Jane answered, hurriedly; and then, turning away, tied on her bonnet with trembling hands. Madam had done everything else; she had left nothing for Jane to provide. They went out together, no longer alarmed to be seen—two dark figures, hurrying down the great stairs. But the languor that follows excitement had got into the house: there were no watchers about; the whole place seemed deserted. She, who that morning had been the mistress of Highcourt, went out of the home of so many years without a soul to mark her going or bid her good-speed. But the anguish of the parting was far too great to leave room for any thought of the details. They stepped out into the night, into the dark, to the sobbing of the wind and the wildly blowing trees. The storm outside gave them a little relief from that which was within.
Madam went swiftly, softly along, with that power of putting aside the overwhelming consciousness of wretchedness which is possessed by those whose appointed measure of misery is the largest in this world. To die then would have been best, but not to be helpless and encounter the pity of those who could give no aid. She had the power not to think, to address herself to what was before her, and hold back “upon the threshold of the mind” the supreme anguish of which she could never be free, which there would be time enough, alas! and to spare, to indulge in. Perhaps, though she knew so much and was so experienced in pain, it did not occur to her at this terrible crisis of life to think it possible that any further pang might be awaiting her. The other, who waited for her within shade of the copse, drew back when he perceived that two people were coming towards him. He scarcely responded even when Mrs. Trevanion called him in a low voice by name. “Whom have you got with you?” he said, almost in a whisper, holding himself concealed among the trees.
“Only Jane.”
“Only Jane,” he said, in a tone of relief, but still with a roughness and sullenness out of keeping with his youthful voice. He added, after a moment, “What does Jane want? I hope there is not going to be any sentimental leave-taking. I want to stay and not to go.”
“That is impossible now. Everything is altered. I am going with you, Edmund.”
“Going with me—good Lord!” There was a moment’s silence; then he resumed in a tone of satire, “What may that be for? Going with me! Do you think I can’t take care of myself? Do you think I want a nurse at my heels?” Then another pause. “I know what you mean. You are going away for a change, and you mean me to turn up easily and be introduced to the family? Not a bad idea at all,” he added, in a patronizing tone.
“Edmund,” she said, “afterwards, when we have time, I will tell you everything. There is no time now; but that has come about which I thought impossible. I am—free to make up to you as much as I can, for the past—”
“Free,” he repeated, with astonishment, “to make up to me?” The pause that followed seemed one of consternation. Then he went on roughly, “I don’t know what you mean by making up to me. I have often heard that women couldn’t reason. You don’t mean that you are flinging over the others now, to make a romance—and balance matters? I don’t know what you mean.”
Madam Trevanion grasped Jane’s arm and leaned upon it with what seemed a sudden collapse of strength, but this was invisible to the other, who probably was unaware of any effect produced by what he said. Her voice came afterwards through the dark with a thrill in it that seemed to move the air, something more penetrating than the wind.
“I have no time to explain,” she said. “I must husband my strength, which has been much tried. I am going with you to London to-night. We have a long walk before we reach the train. On the way, or afterwards, as my strength serves me, I will tell you—all that has happened. What I am doing,” she added, faintly, “is by no will of mine.”
“To London to-night?” he repeated, with astonishment. “I am not going to London to-night.”
“Yes, Edmund, with me. I want you.”
“I have wanted,” he said, “you—or, at least, I have wanted my proper place and the people I belonged to, all my life. If you think that now, when I am a man, I am to be burdened with two women always at my heels— Why can’t you stay and make everything comfortable here? I want my rights, but I don’t want you—more than is reasonable,” he added after a moment, slightly struck by his own ungraciousness. “As for walking to the train, and going to London to-night—you, a fine lady, that have always driven about in your carriage!” He gave a hoarse little laugh at the ridiculous suggestion.
Mrs. Trevanion again clutched Jane’s arm. It was the only outlet for her excitement. She said very low, “I should not have expected better—oh, no; how could he know better, after all! But I must go, there is no choice. Edmund, if anything I can do now can blot out the past—no, not that—but make up for it. You too, you have been very tyrannical to me these months past. Hush! let me speak, it is quite true. If you could have had patience, all might have been so different. Let us not upbraid each other—but if you will let me, all that I can do for you now—all that is possible—”
There was another pause. Jane, standing behind, supported her mistress in her outstretched arms, but this was not apparent, nor any other sign of weakness, except that her voice quivered upon the dark air which was still in the shadow of the copse.
“I have told you,” he said, “again and again, what would please me. We can’t be much devoted to each other, can we, after all! We can’t be a model of what’s affectionate. That was all very well when I was a child, when I thought a present was just as good, or better. But now I know what is what, and that something more is wanted. Why can’t you stay still where you are and send for me? You can say I’m a relation. I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself—what good will that do me? I want to get the advantage of my relations, to know them all, and have my chance. There’s one thing I’ve set my heart upon, and you could help me in that if you liked. But to run away, good Lord! what good would that do? It’s all for effect, I suppose, to make me think you are willing now to do a deal for me. You can do a deal for me if you like, but it will be by staying, not by running away.”
