Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER XLI
Johnny’s little social successes were so frequent that the memory of the poor lady who had lost her child at his age soon died away, and the toy got broken and went the way of all toys. Their life was spent in a very simple round of occupations. Rosalind, whose powers as an artist were not beyond the gentlest level of amateur art, took to sketching, as a means of giving some interest to her idle hours, and it became one of the habits of the family that Aunt Sophy, when well enough to go out for her usual afternoon drive, should deposit her niece and the children on the bank of the lake, the spot which Rosalind had chosen as the subject of a sketch. The hills opposite shone in the afternoon sun with a gray haze of heat softening all their outlines; the water glowed and sparkled in all its various tones of blue, here and there specked by a slowly progressing boat, carrying visitors across to the mock antiquity of Hautecombe.
After the jingle and roll of Mrs. Lennox’s carriage had passed away, the silence of the summer heat so stilled the landscape that the distant clank of the oars on the water produced the highest effect. It was very warm, yet there was something in the haze that spoke of autumn, and a cool but capricious little breeze came now and then from the water. Rosalind, sitting in the shade, with her sketching-block upon her knee, felt that soft indolence steal over her, that perfect physical content and harmony with everything, which takes all impulse from the mind and makes the sweetness of doing nothing a property of the very atmosphere. Her sketch was very unsatisfactory, for one thing: the subject was much too great for her simple powers. She knew just enough to know that it was bad, but not how to do what she wished, to carry out her own ideal. To make out the open secret before her, and perceive how it was that Nature formed those shadows and poured down that light, was possible to her mind but not to her hand, which had not the cunning necessary for the task; but she was clever enough to see her incapacity, which is more than can be said of most amateurs. Her hands had dropped by her side, and her sketch upon her lap. After all, who could hope to put upon paper those dazzling lights, and the differing tones of air and distance, the shadows that flitted over the mountainsides, the subdued radiance of the sky? Perhaps a great artist, Turner or his chosen rival, but not an untrained girl, whose gifts were only for the drawing-room. Rosalind was not moved by any passion of regret on account of her failure. She was content to sit still and vaguely contemplate the beautiful scene, which was half within her and half without. The “inward eye which is the bliss of solitude” filled out the outline of the picture for her as she sat, not thinking, a part of the silent rapture of the scene. The children were playing near her, and their voices, softened in the warm air, made part of the beatitude of the moment—that, and the plash of the water on the shore, and the distant sound of the oars, and the breeze that blew in her face. It was one of those exquisite instants, without any actual cause of happiness in them, when we are happy without knowing why. Such periods come back to the mind as the great events which are called joyful never do—for with events, however joyful, there come agitations, excitements—whereas pure happiness is serene, and all the sweeter for being without any cause.
Thus Rosalind sat—notwithstanding many things in her life which were far from perfect—in perfect calm and pleasure. The nurse, seated lower down upon the beach, was busy with a piece of work, crochet or some other of those useless handiworks which are a refreshment to those who are compelled to be useful for the greater portion of their lives. The children were still nearer to the edge of the water, playing with a little pleasure-boat which was moored within the soft plash of the lake. It was not a substantial craft, like the boats native to the place, which are meant to convey passengers and do serious work, but was a little, gayly painted, pleasure skiff, belonging to an Englishman in the neighborhood, neither safe nor solid—one of the cockleshells that a wrong balance upsets in a moment. It was to all appearance safely attached to something on the land, and suggested no idea of danger either to the elder sister seated above or to the nurse on the beach.
Amy and Johnny had exhausted their imagination in a hundred dramatic plays; they had “pretended” to be kings and queens; to be a lady receiving visitors and a gentleman making a morning call; to be a clergyman preaching to a highly critical and unsatisfactory audience, which would neither stay quiet nor keep still; to be a procession chanting funeral hymns; even coming down sadly from that level of high art to keep a shop, selling pebbles and sand for tea and sugar. Such delights, however, are but transitory; the children, after a while, exhausted every device they could think of; and then they got into the boat, which it was very easy to do. The next thing, as was natural, was to “pretend” to push off and row. And, alas! the very first of these attempts was too successful. The boat had been attached, as it appeared, merely to a small iron rod thrust into the sand, and Johnny, being vigorous and pulling with all his little might—with so much might that he tumbled into the bottom of the boat head over heels in the revulsion of the effort—the hold gave way. Both nurse and sister sat tranquilly, fearing no evil, while this tremendous event took place, and it was not till the shifting of some bright lines in the foreground caught Rosalind’s dreaming eye that the possibility of any accident occurred to her. She sprang to her feet then, with a loud cry which startled the nurse and a group of children playing farther on, on the beach, but no one who could be of any real assistance. The little bright vessel was afloat and already bearing away upon the shining water. In a minute it was out of reach of anything the women could do. There was not a boat or a man within sight; the only hope was in the breeze which directed the frail little skiff to a small projecting point farther on, to which, as soon as her senses came back to her, Rosalind rushed, with what intention she scarcely knew, to plunge into the water though she could not swim, to do something, if it should only be to drown along with them. The danger that the boat might float out into the lake was not all; for any frightened movement, even an attempt to help themselves on the part of the children, might upset the frail craft in a moment, and end their voyage forever.
She flew over the broken ground, stumbling in her hurry and agitation, doing her best to stifle the cries that burst from her, lest she should frighten the little voyagers. For the moment they were quite still, surprise and alarm and a temporary confusion as to what to do having quieted their usual restlessness. Amy’s little face, with a smile on it, gradually growing fixed as fear crept over her which she would not betray, and Johnny’s back as he settled himself on the rowing seat, with his arms just beginning to move towards the oars which Rosalind felt would be instant destruction did he get hold of them, stood out in her eyes as if against a background of flame. It was only the background of the water, all soft and glowing, with scarcely a ripple upon it, safe, so peaceful, and yet death. There could not have been a prettier picture. The boat was reflected in every tint, the children’s dresses, its own lines of white and crimson, the foolish little flag of the same colors that fluttered at the bow—all prettiness, gayety, a picture that would have delighted a child, softly floating, double, boat and shadow. But never was any scene of prettiness looked at with such despair. “Keep still, keep still,” Rosalind cried, half afraid even to say so much, as she flew along, her brain all one throb. If but the gentle breeze, the current so slight as to be scarcely visible, would drift them to the point! if only her feet would carry her there in time! Her sight seemed to fail her, and yet for years after it was like a picture ineffaceably printed upon her eyes.
She was rushing into the water in despair, with her hands stretched out, but, alas! seeing too clearly that the boat was still out of her reach, and restraining with pain the cry of anguish which would have startled the children, when she felt herself suddenly put aside and a coat, thrown off by some one in rapid motion, fell at her feet. Rosalind did not lose her senses, which were all strung to the last degree of vivid force and capability; but she knew nothing, did not think, was conscious neither of her own existence nor of how this came about, of nothing but the sight before her eyes. She stood among the reeds, her feet in the water, trying to smile to the children, to Amy, upon whom terror was growing, and to keep her own cries from utterance. The plunge of the new-comer in the water startled Johnny. He had got hold of the oar, and in the act of flinging it upon the water with the clap which used to delight him on the lake at home, turned sharply round to see what this new sound meant. Then the light vanished from Rosalind’s eyes. She uttered one cry, which seemed to ring from one end of the lake to the other, and startled the rowers far away on the other side. Then gradually sight came back to her. Had it all turned into death and destruction, that shining water, with its soft reflections, the pretty outline, the floating colors? She heard a sound of voices, the tones of the children, and then the scene became visible again, as if a black shadow had been removed. There was the boat, still floating double, Amy’s face full of smiles, Johnny’s voice raised high—“Oh, I could have doned it!”—a man’s head above the level of the water, a hand upon the side of the boat. Then some one called to her, “No harm done; I will take them back to the beach.” The throbbing went out of Rosalind’s brain and went lower down, till her limbs shook under her, and how to get through the reeds she could not tell. She lifted the coat instinctively and struggled along, taking, it seemed to her, half an hour to retrace the steps which she had made in two minutes in the access of terror which had left her so weak. The nurse, who had fallen helpless on the beach, covering her eyes with her hands not to see the catastrophe, had recovered and got the children in her arms before Rosalind reached them. They were quite at their ease, and skipped about on the shingle, when lifted from the boat, with an air of triumph. “I could have doned it if you had left me alone,” said Johnny, careless of the mingled caresses and reproaches that fell upon him in a torrent—the “Oh, children, you’ve almost killed me!” of nurse, and the passionate clasp with which Rosalind seized upon them. “We were floating beautiful,” said little Amy, oblivious of her terrors; and they began to descant both together upon the delights of their “sail.” “Oh, it is far nicer than those big boats!” “And if he had let me get the oars out I’d have doned it myself,” cried Johnny. The group of children which had been disturbed by the accident stood round, gaping open-mouthed in admiration, and the loud sound of hurrying oars from a boat rushing across the lake to the rescue added to the excitement of the little hero and heroine. Rosalind’s dress was torn with her rush through the reeds, her shoes wet, her whole frame trembling; while nurse had got her tidy bonnet awry and her hair out of order. But the small adventurers had suffered no harm or strain of any kind. They were jaunty in their perfect success and triumph.
“I thought it safest to bring them round to this bit of beach, where they could be landed without any difficulty. Oh, pray don’t say anything about it. It was little more than wading, the water is not deep. And I am amply—Miss Trevanion? I am shocked to see you carrying my coat!”
Rosalind turned to the dripping figure by her side with a cry of astonishment. She had been far too much agitated even to make any question in her mind who it was. Now she raised her eyes to meet—what? the eyes that were like Johnny’s, the dark, wistful, appealing look which had come back to her mind so often. He stood there with the water running from him, in the glow of exertion, his face thinner and less boyish, but his look the same as when he had come to her help on the country road, and by the little lake at Highcourt. It flashed through Rosalind’s mind that he had always come to her help. She uttered the “Oh!” which is English for every sudden wonder, not knowing what to say.
“I hope,” he said, “that you may perhaps remember I once saw you at Highcourt in the old days, in a little difficulty with a boat. This was scarcely more than that.”
“I recollect,” she said, her breath coming fast; “you were very kind—and now— Oh, this is a great deal more; I owe you—their lives.”
“Pray don’t say so. It was nothing—any one would have done it, even if there had been a great deal more to do, but there was nothing; it was little more than wading.” Then he took his coat from her hand, which she had been holding all the time. “It is far more—it is too much that you should have carried my coat, Miss Trevanion. It is more than a reward.”
She had thought of the face so often, the eyes fixed upon her, and had forgotten what doubts had visited her mind when she saw him before. Now, when she met the gaze of those eyes again, all her doubts came back. There was a faint internal struggle, even while she remembered that he had saved the lives of the children. “I know,” she said, recollecting herself, “that we have met before, and that I had other things to thank you for, though nothing like this. But you must forgive me, for I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Everard,” he said, with a little hesitation and a quick flush of color. His face, which had always been refined in feature, had a delicacy that looked like ill-health, and as he pulled on his coat over his wet clothes he shivered slightly. Was it because he felt the chill, or only to call forth the sudden anxiety which appeared in Rosalind’s face? “Oh,” he said, “it was momentary. I shall take no harm.”
“What can we do?” cried Rosalind, with alarm. “If it should make you ill! And you are here perhaps for the baths? and yet have plunged in without thought. What can we do? There is no carriage nor anything to be got. Oh, Mr. Everard! take pity upon me and hasten home.”
“I will walk with you if you will let me.”
“But we cannot go quick, the children are not able; and what if you catch cold! My aunt would never forgive me if I let you wait.”
“There could be nothing improper,” he said hastily, “with the nurse and the children.”
Rosalind felt the pain of this mistaken speech prick her like a pin-point. To think in your innermost consciousness that a man is “not a gentleman” is worse than anything else that can be said of him in English speech. She hesitated and was angry with herself, but yet her color rose high. “What I mean,” she said, with an indescribable, delicate pride, “is that you will take cold—you understand me, surely—you will take cold after being in the water. I beg you to go on without waiting, for the children cannot walk quickly.”
“And you?” he said; still he did not seem to understand, but looked at her with a sort of delighted persuasion that she was avoiding the walk with him coyly, with that feminine withdrawal which leads a suitor on. “You are just as wet as I am. Could not we two push on and leave the children to follow?”
Rosalind gave him a look which was full of almost despairing wonder. The mind and the words conveyed so different an impression from that made by the refined features and harmonious face. “Oh, please go away,” she said, “I am in misery to see you standing there so wet. My aunt will send to you to thank you. Oh, please go away! If you catch cold we will never forgive ourselves,” Rosalind cried, with an earnestness that brought tears to her eyes.
“Miss Trevanion, that you should care—”
Rosalind, in her heat and eagerness, made an imperious gesture, stamping her foot on the sand in passionate impatience. “Go, go!” she cried. “We owe you the children’s lives, and we shall not forget it—but go!”
He hesitated. He did not believe nor understand her! He looked in her eyes wistfully, yet with a sort of smile, to know how much of it was true. Could any one who was a gentleman have so failed to apprehend her meaning? Yet it did gleam on him at length, and he obeyed her, though reluctantly, turning back half a dozen times in the first hundred yards to see if she were coming. At last a turn in the road hid him from her troubled eyes.
CHAPTER XLII
When the party arrived at the hotel and Aunt Sophy was informed of what had happened, her excitement was great. The children were caressed and scolded in a breath. After a while, however, the enormity of their behavior was dwelt upon by all their guardians together.
“I was saying, ma’am, that I couldn’t never take Miss Amy and Master Johnny near to that lake again. Oh, I couldn’t! The hotel garden, I couldn’t go farther, not with any peace of mind.”
“You hear what nurse says, children,” said Aunt Sophy; “she is quite right. It would be impossible for me to allow you to go out again unless you made me a promise, oh, a faithful promise.”
Amy was tired with the long walk after all the excitement; and she was always an impressionable little thing. She began to cry and protest that she never meant any harm, that the boat was so pretty, and that she was sure it was fastened and could not get away. But Johnny held his ground. “I could have doned it myself,” he said; “I know how to row. Nobody wasn’t wanted—if that fellow had let us alone.”
“Where is the gentleman, Rosalind?” cried Mrs. Lennox. “Oh, how could you be so ungrateful as to let him go without asking where he was to be found? To think he should have saved those precious children and not to know where to find him to thank him! Oh, children, only think, if you had been brought home all cold and stiff, and laid out there never to give any more trouble, never to go home again, never to speak to your poor, distracted auntie, or to poor Rosalind, or to— Oh, my darlings! What should I have done if you had been brought home to me like that? It would have killed me. I should never more have held up my head again.”
At this terrible prospect, and at the sight of Aunt Sophy’s tears, Amy flung her arms as far as they would go round that portly figure, and hid her sobs upon her aunt’s bosom. Johnny began to yield; he grew pale, and his big eyes veiled themselves with a film of tears. To think of lying there cold and stiff, as Aunt Sophy said, daunted the little hero. “I could have doned it,” he said, but faltered, and his mouth began to quiver.
“And Uncle John,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “and Rex! what would you have said never, never to see them again?”
Johnny, in his own mind, piled up the agony still higher—and the rabbits, and the pigeons, and his own pet guinea-pig, and his pony! He flung himself into Aunt Sophy’s lap, which was so large, and so soft, and so secure.
This scene moved Rosalind both to tears and laughter; for it was a little pathetic as well as funny, and the girl was overstrained. She would have liked to fling herself, too, into arms of love like Aunt Sophy’s, which were full—arms as loving, but more strong. The children did not want their mother, but Rosalind did. Her mind was moved by sentiments more complex than Johnny’s emotions, but she had no one to have recourse to. The afternoon brightness had faded, and the gray of twilight filled the large room, making everything indistinct. At this crisis the door opened and somebody was ushered into the room, some one who came forward with a hesitating, yet eager, step. “I hope I may be permitted, though I am without introduction, to ask if the children have taken any harm,” he said.
“It is Mr. Everard, Aunt Sophy.” Rosalind retired to the background, her heart beating loudly. She wanted to look on, to see what appearance he presented to a spectator, to know how he would speak, what he would say.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Lennox, standing up with a child in each arm, “it is the gentleman who saved my darlings—it is your deliverer, children. Oh, sir, what can I say to you; how can I even thank you? You have saved my life too, for I should never have survived if anything had happened to them.”
He stood against the light of one of the windows, unconscious of the eager criticism with which he was being watched. Perhaps the bow he made was a little elaborate, but his voice was soft and refined. “I am very glad if I have been of any service,” he said.
“Oh, service! it is far, far beyond that. I hope Rosalind said something to you; I hope she told you how precious they were, and that we could never, never forget.”
“There is nothing to thank me for, indeed. It was more a joke than anything else; the little things were in no danger so long as they sat still. I was scarcely out of my depth, not much more than wading all the time.”
“Aunt Sophy, that is what I told you,” said Johnny, withdrawing his head from under her arm. “I could have doned it myself.”
“Oh, hush, Johnny! Whatever way it was done, what does that matter? Here they are, and they might have been at the bottom of the lake. And you risked your own life or your health, which comes to the same thing! Pray sit down, Mr. Everard. If you are here,” Aunt Sophy went on, loosing her arms from the children and sitting down with the full purpose of enjoying a talk, “as I am, for the waters, to get drenched and to walk home in your wet clothes must have been madness—that is, if you are here for your health.”
“I am here for the baths, but a trifle like that could harm no one.”
“Oh, I trust not—oh, I anxiously trust not! It makes my heart stand still even to think of it. Are you getting any benefit? It is for rheumatism, I suppose? And what form does yours take? One sufferer is interested in another,” Mrs. Lennox said.
He seemed to wince a little, and threw a glance behind into the dimness to look for Rosalind. To confess to rheumatism is not interesting. He said at last, with a faint laugh, “I had rheumatic fever some years ago. My heart is supposed to be affected, that is all; the water couldn’t hurt that organ; indeed I think it did good.”
Rosalind, in the background, knew that this was meant for her; but her criticism was disarmed by a touch of humorous sympathy for the poor young fellow, who had expected, no doubt, to appear in the character of a hero, and was thus received as a fellow-sufferer in rheumatism. But Mrs. Lennox naturally saw nothing ludicrous in the situation. “Mine,” she said, “is in the joints. I get so stiff, and really to rise up after I have been sitting down for any time is quite an operation. I suppose you don’t feel anything of that sort? To be sure, you are so much younger—but sufferers have a fellow-feeling. And when did you begin your baths? and how many do you mean to take? and do you think they are doing you any good? It is more than I can say just at present, but they tell me that it often happens so, and that it is afterwards that one feels the good result.”
“I know scarcely any one here,” said the young man, “so I have not been able to compare notes; but I am not ill, only taking the baths to please a—relation, who, perhaps,” he said with a little laugh, “takes more interest in me than I deserve.”
“Oh, I am sure not that!” said Aunt Sophy, with enthusiasm. “But, indeed, it is very nice of you to pay so much attention to your relation’s wishes. You will never repent putting yourself to trouble for her peace of mind, and I am sure I sympathize with her very much in the anxiety she must be feeling. When the heart is affected it is always serious. I hope, Mr. –”
“Everard,” he said with a bow, once more just a little, as the critic behind him felt, too elaborate for the occasion.
“I beg your pardon. Rosalind did tell me; but I was so much agitated, almost too much to pay any attention. I hope, Mr. Everard, that you are careful to keep yourself from all agitation. I can’t think the shock of plunging into the lake could be good for you. Oh, I feel quite sure it couldn’t be good. I hope you will feel no ill results afterwards. But excitement of any sort, or agitation, that is the worst thing for the heart. I hope, for your poor dear relation’s sake, who must be so anxious, poor lady, that you will take every care.”
He gave a glance behind Mrs. Lennox to the shadow which stood between him and the window. “That depends,” he said, “rather on other people than on myself. You may be sure I should prefer to be happy and at ease if it were in my power.”
“Ah, well!” said Aunt Sophy, “that is very true. Of course our happiness depends very much upon other people. And you have done a great deal for mine, Mr. Everard. It would not have done me much good to have people telling me to be cheerful if my poor little darlings had been at the bottom of the lake.” Here Aunt Sophy stopped and cried a little, then went on. “You are not, I think, living at our hotel, but I hope you will stay and dine with us. Oh, yes, I cannot take any refusal. We may have made your acquaintance informally, but few people can have so good a reason for wishing to know you. This is my niece, Miss Trevanion, Mr. Everard; the little children you saved are my brother’s children—the late Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt.”
Rosalind listened with her heart beating high. Was it possible that he would receive the introduction as if he had known nothing of her before? He rose and turned towards her, made once more that slightly stiff, too elaborate bow, and was silent. No, worse than that, began to say something about being happy to make—acquaintance.
“Aunt Sophy,” said Rosalind, stepping forward, “you are under a mistake. Mr. Everard knows us well enough. I met him before we left Highcourt.” And then she, too, paused, feeling with sudden embarrassment that there was a certain difficulty in explaining their meetings, a difficulty of which she had not thought. It was he now who had the advantage which she had felt to lie with herself.
“It is curious how things repeat themselves,” he said. “I had once the pleasure of recovering a boat that had floated away from Miss Trevanion on the pond at Highcourt, but I could not have ventured to claim acquaintance on so small an argument as that.”
Rosalind was silenced—her mind began to grow confused. It was not true that this was all, and yet it was not false. She said nothing; if it were wrong, she made herself an accomplice in the wrong; and Aunt Sophy’s exclamations soon put an end to the incident.
“So you had met before!” she cried. “So you know Highcourt! Oh, what a very small world this is!—everybody says so, but it is only now and then that one is sensible. But you must tell us all about it at dinner. We dine at the table d’hôte, if you don’t mind. It is more amusing, and I don’t like to shut up Rosalind with only an old lady like me for her company. You like it too? Oh, well, that is quite nice. Will you excuse us now, Mr. Everard, while we prepare for dinner? for that is the dressing-bell just ringing, and they allow one so little time. Give me your hand, dear, to help me up. You see I am quite crippled,” Mrs. Lennox said, complacently, forgetting how nimbly she had sprung from her chair with a child under each arm to greet their deliverer. She limped a little as she went out of the room on Rosalind’s arm. She was quite sure that her rheumatism made her limp; but sometimes she forgot that she had rheumatism, which is a thing that will happen in such cases now and then.
The room was still dark. It was not Mrs. Lennox’s custom to have it lighted before dinner, and when the door closed upon the ladies the young man was left alone. His thoughts were full of triumph and satisfaction, not unmingled with praise. He had attained by the chance of a moment what he had set his heart upon, he said to himself; for years he had haunted Highcourt for this end; he had been kept cruelly and unnaturally (he thought) from realizing it. Those who might have helped him, without any harm to themselves, had refused and resisted his desire, and compelled him to relinquish it. And now in a moment he had attained what he had so desired. Introduced under the most flattering circumstances, with every prepossession in his favor, having had it in his power to lay under the deepest obligation the family, the guardians as well as the girl who, he said to himself, was the only girl he had ever loved. Did he love Rosalind? He thought so, as Mrs. Lennox thought she had rheumatism. Both were serious enough—and perhaps this young stranger was not clearly aware how much it was he saw in Rosalind besides herself. He saw in her a great deal that did not meet the outward eye, though he also saw the share of beauty she possessed, magnified by his small acquaintance with women of her kind. He saw her sweet and fair and desirable in every way, as the truest lover might have done. And there were other advantages which such a lover as Roland Hamerton would have scorned to take into consideration, which Rivers—not able at his more serious age to put them entirely out of his mind—yet turned from instinctively as if it were doing her a wrong to remember them, but which this young man realized vividly and reminded himself of with rising exhilaration. With such a wife what might he not do? Blot out everything that was against him, attain everything he had ever dreamed of, secure happiness, advancement, wealth. He moved from window to window of the dim room, waiting for the ladies, in a state of exaltation indescribable. He had been raised at once from earth to heaven. There was not a circumstance that was not in his favor. He was received by them as an intimate, he was to be their escort, to be introduced by them, to form one of their party; and Rosalind! Rosalind! she was the only girl whom he had ever loved.
