Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER XLIII
He was placed between the ladies at the table d’hôte. Mrs. Lennox, on her side, told the story of what had happened to the lady on her other side, and Rosalind was appealed to by her left-hand neighbor to know what was the truth of the rumor which had begun to float about the little community. It was reported all down the table, so far, at least, as the English group extended, “That is the gentleman next to Mrs. Lennox—the children were drowning, and he plunged in and saved both.” “What carelessness to let them go so near the water! It is easy to see, poor things, that they have no mother.” “And did he save them both? Of course, they must both be safe or Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion would not have appeared at the table d’hôte.” Such remarks as these, interspersed with questions, “Who is the young fellow?—where has he sprung from? I never saw him before,” buzzed all about as dinner went on. Mr. Everard was presented by Mrs. Lennox, in her gratitude, to the lady next to her, who was rather a great lady, and put up her glass to look at him. He was introduced to the gentleman on Rosalind’s other hand by that gentleman’s request. Thus he made his appearance in society at Aix with greatest éclat. When they rose from the table he followed Rosalind out of doors into the soft autumnal night. The little veranda and the garden walks under the trees were full of people, under cover of whose noisy conversation there was abundant opportunity for a more interesting tête-à-tête. “You are too kind,” he said, “in telling this little story. Indeed, there was nothing to make any commotion about. You could almost have done it, without any help from me.”
“No,” she said. “I could not have done it; I should have tried and perhaps been drowned, too. But it is not I who have talked, it is Aunt Sophy. She is very grateful to you.”
“She has no occasion,” he said. “Whatever I could do for you, Miss Trevanion—” and then he stopped, somewhat breathlessly. “It was curious, was it not? that the boat on the pond should have been so much the same thing, though everything else was so different. And that is years ago.”
“Nearly two years.”
“Then you remember?” he said, in a tone of delighted surprise.
“I have much occasion to remember. It was at a very sad moment. I remember everything that happened.”
“To be sure,” said the young man. “No, I did not forget. It was only that in the pleasure of seeing you everything else went out of my mind. But I have never forgotten, Miss Trevanion, all your anxiety. I saw you, you may remember, the day you were leaving home.”
Rosalind raised her eyes to him with a look of pain. “It is not a happy recollection,” she said.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind. I hope you will forgive me for recalling to you what is so painful.”
“The sight of you recalls it,” she said; “it is not your fault, Mr. Everard, you had relations near Highcourt.”
“Only one, but nobody now—nobody. It was a sort of chance that took me there at all. I was in a little trouble, and then I left suddenly, as it happened, the same day as you did, Miss Trevanion. How well I remember it all! You were carrying the same little boy who was in the boat to-day—was it the same?—and you would not let me help you. I almost think if you had seen it was me you would not have allowed me to help you to-day.”
“If I had seen it was—” Rosalind paused with troubled surprise. Sometimes his fine voice and soft tones lulled her doubts altogether, but, again, a sudden touch brought them all back. He was very quick, however, to observe the changes in her, and changed with them with a curious mixture of sympathy and servility.
“Circumstances have carried me far away since then,” he said; “but I have always longed to know, to hear, something. If I could tell you the questions I have asked myself as to what might be going on; and how many times I have tried to get to England to find out!”
“We have never returned to Highcourt,” she said, confused by his efforts to bring back those former meetings, and not knowing how to reply. “I think we shall not till my brother comes of age. Yes, my little brother was the same. He is very much excited about what happened to-day; neither of them understood it at first, but now they begin to perceive that it is a wonderful adventure. I hope the wetting will do you no harm.”
“Please,” he said in a petulant tone, “if you do not want to vex me, say no more of that. I am not such a weak creature; indeed, there is nothing the matter with me, except in imagination.”
“I think,” said Rosalind, with a little involuntary laugh, “that the baths of Aix are good for the imagination. It grows by what it feeds on; though rheumatism does not seem to be an imaginative sort of malady.”
“You forget,” he cried, almost with resentment; “the danger of it is that it affects the heart, which is not a thing to laugh at.”
“Oh, forgive me!” Rosalind cried. “I should not have spoken so lightly. It was because you were so determined that nothing ailed you. And I hope you are right. The lake was so beautiful to-day. It did not look as if it could do harm.”
“You go there often? I saw you had been painting.”
“Making a very little, very bad, sketch, that was all. Mr. Everard, I think I must go in. My aunt will want me.”
“May I come, too? How kind she is! I feared that being without introduction, knowing nobody— But Mrs. Lennox has been most generous, receiving me without a question—and you, Miss Trevanion.”
“Did you expect me to stop you from saving the children till I had asked who you were?” cried Rosalind, endeavoring to elude the seriousness with which he always returned to the original subject. “It is a pretty manner of introduction to do us the greatest service, the greatest kindness.”
“But it was nothing. I can assure you it was nothing,” he said. He liked to be able to make this protestation. It was a sort of renewing of his claim upon them. To have a right, the very strongest right, to their gratitude, and yet to declare it was nothing—that was very pleasant to the young man. And in a way it was true. He would have done anything that it did not hurt him very much to do for Rosalind, even for her aunt and her little brothers and sisters, but to feel that he was entitled to their thanks and yet waived them was delightful to him. It was a statement over and over again of his right to be with them. He accompanied Rosalind to the room in which Aunt Sophy had established herself, with mingled confidence and timidity, ingratiating himself by every means that was possible, though he did not talk very much. Indeed, he was not great in conversation at any time, and now he was so anxious to please that he was nervous and doubtful what to say.
Mrs. Lennox received the young people with real pleasure. She liked, as has been said in a previous part of this history, to have a young man about, in general attendance, ready to go upon her errands and make himself agreeable. It added to the ease and the gayety of life to have a lover upon hand, one who was not too far gone, who still had eyes for the other members of the party, and a serious intention of making himself generally pleasant. She had never concealed her opinion that an attendant of this description was an advantage. And Mrs. Lennox was imprudent to the bottom of her heart. She had plenty of wise maxims in store as to the necessity of keeping ineligible persons at a distance, but it did not occur to her to imagine that a well-looking young stranger attaching himself to her own party might be ineligible. Of Arthur Rivers she had known that his family lived in an obscure street in Clifton, which furnished her with objections at once. But of Mr. Everard, who had saved the children’s lives, she had no doubts. She did, indeed, mean to ask him if he belonged to the Everards of Essex, but in the meantime was quite willing to take that for granted.
“It is so curious,” she said, making room for him to bring a chair beside her, “that you and Rosalind should have met before, and how fortunate for us! Oh, yes, Highcourt is a fine place. Of course we think so, Rosalind and I, having both been born there. We think there is no place in the world like it; but I have a right to feel myself impartial, for I have been a good deal about; and there is no doubt it is a fine place. Did you see over the house, Mr. Everard? Oh, no, of course it was when my poor brother was ill. There were so many trying circumstances,” she added, lowering her voice, “that we thought it best just to leave it, you know, and the Elms does very well for the children as long as they are children. Of course, when Reginald comes of age— Do you know the neighborhood of Clifton, Mr. Everard? Oh, you must come and see me there. It is a capital hunting country, you know, and that is always an inducement to a gentleman.”
“I should have no need of any inducement, if you are so kind.”
“It is you that have been kind,” Mrs, Lennox said. “I am sure if we can do anything to make our house agreeable to you— Now tell me how you get on here. How often do you take the baths? Oh, I hope you are regular—so much depends upon regularity, they tell me. Lady Blashfield, whom I was talking to at dinner, tells me that if you miss one it is as bad as giving up altogether. It is the continuity, she says. Young men are very difficult to guide in respect to their health. My dear husband, that is, Mr. Pulteney, my first dear husband, whom I lost when we were both quite young, might have been here now, poor dear fellow, if he had only consented to be an invalid, and to use the remedies. You must let one who has suffered so much say a word of warning to you, Mr. Everard. Use the remedies, and youth will do almost everything for you. He might have been here now—” Mrs. Lennox paused and applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
Young Everard listened with the most devout attention, while Rosalind, on her side, could not refrain from an involuntary reflection as to the extreme inconvenience of Mr. Pulteney’s presence now. If that had been all along possible, was not Aunt Sophy guilty of a kind of constructive bigamy? To hear her dwelling upon this subject, and the stranger listening with so much attention, gave Rosalind an insane desire to laugh. Even Roland Hamerton, she thought, would have seen the humor of the suggestion; but Everard was quite serious, lending an attentive ear. He was very anxious to please. There was an absence of ease about him in his anxiety. Not the ghost of a smile stole to his lips. He sat there until Mrs. Lennox got tired, and remembered that the early hour at which she began to bathe every morning made it expedient now to go to bed. He was on the alert in a moment, offering his arm, and truly sympathetic about the difficulty she expressed in rising from her chair. “I can get on when once I am fairly started,” she said; “thank you so much, Mr. Everard. Rosalind is very kind, but naturally in a gentleman’s arm there is more support.”
“I am so glad that I can be of use,” he said fervently. And Rosalind followed up-stairs, carrying Aunt Sophy’s work, half pleased, half amused, a little disconcerted by the sudden friendship which had arisen between them. She was, herself, in a very uncertain, somewhat excited state of mind. The re-appearance of the stranger who had achieved for himself, she could not tell how, a place in her dreams, disturbed the calm in which she had been living, which in itself was a calm unnatural at her age. Her heart beat with curious content, expectation, doubt, and anxiety. He was not like the other men whom she had known. There was something uncertain about him, a curiosity as to what he would do or say, a suppressed alarm in her mind as to whether his doings and sayings would be satisfactory. He might make some terrible mistake. He might say something that would set in a moment a great gulf between him and her. It was uncomfortable, and yet perhaps it had a certain fascination in it. She never knew what was the next thing he might say or do. But Aunt Sophy was loud in his praises when they reached their own apartment. “What a thoroughly nice person!” she said. “What a modest, charming young man! not like so many, laughing in their sleeve, in a hurry to get away, taking no trouble about elder people. Mr. Everard has been thoroughly well brought up, Rosalind; he must have had a nice mother. That is always what I think when I see a young man with such good manners. His mother must have been a nice woman. I am sure if he had been my own nephew he could not have been more attentive to me.”
Rosalind said little in reply to this praise. She was pleased, and yet an intrusive doubt would come in. To be a little original, not like all the others, is not that an advantage? and yet— She went to her own room, thoughtful, yet with a sensation of novelty not without pleasure in her mind, and paused, in passing, at the children’s door to pay them her usual visit, and give them the kiss when they were asleep which their mother was not near to give. This visit had a twofold meaning to Rosalind. It was a visit of love to the little ones, that they might not be deprived of any tenderness that she could give; and it was a sort of pilgrimage of faithful devotion to the shrine which the mother had left empty. A pang of longing for that mother, and of the wondering pain which her name always called forth, was in her heart when she stooped over the little beds. Ordinarily, everything was dim—the faint night-light affording guidance to where they lay, and no more—and still, with nothing but the soft breathing of the two children, one in the outer and the other in the inner room. But to-night there was a candle burning within and the sound of nurse’s voice soothing Johnny, who, sitting up in his bed, was looking round him with eyes full of light, and that large childish wakefulness which seems a sort of protest against ever sleeping again.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind, I don’t know what to do with Master Johnny; he says a lady came and looked at him. You’ve not been here, have you, miss? I tell him there is no lady. He must just have dreamed it.”
“I didn’t dreamed it,” said Johnny. “It was a beautiful lady. She came in there, and stood here. I want her to come again,” the child said, gazing about him with his great eyes.
“But it is impossible, Miss Rosalind,” said the nurse; “the door is locked, and there is no lady. He just must have been dreaming. He is a little upset with the accident.”
“We wasn’t a bit upsetted,” said Johnny. “I could have doned it myself. I wanted to tell the lady, Rosy, but she only said, ‘Go to sleep.’”
“That was the very wisest thing she could say. Go to sleep, and I will sit by you,” said Rosalind.
It was some time, however, before Johnny accomplished the feat of going to sleep. He was very talkative and anxious to fight his battles over again, and explain exactly how he would have “doned” it. When the little eyes closed at last, and all was still, Rosalind found the nurse waiting in the outer room in some anxiety.
“Yes, Miss Rosalind, I am sure he was off his head a little—not to call wandering, but just a little off his head. For how could any lady have got into this room? It is just his imagination. I had once a little boy before who was just the same, always seeing ladies and people whenever he was the least excited. I will give him a dose in the morning, and if he sees her again I would just send for the doctor. It is all physical, miss, them sort of visions,” said the nurse, who was up to the science of her time.
CHAPTER XLIV
Mrs. Lennox’s cure went on through the greater part of the month of September, and the friendship that had been begun so successfully grew into intimacy perhaps in a shorter time than would have been credible had the conditions of life been less easy. In the space of two or three days Mr. Everard had become almost a member of Mrs. Lennox’s party. He dined with them two evenings out of three. He walked by the elder lady’s chair when she went to her bath, he was always ready to give her his arm when she wished it, to help her to her favorite seat in the garden, to choose a place for her from which she could most comfortably hear the music. All these services to herself Aunt Sophy was quite aware were the price the young man paid for permission to approach Rosalind, to admire and address her, to form part of her surroundings, and by degrees to become her almost constant companion. Mrs. Lennox agreed with Mr. Ruskin that this sort of apprenticeship in love was right and natural. If in spite of all these privileges he failed to please, she would have been sorry for him indeed, but would not have felt that he had any right to complain. It was giving him his chance like another; and she was of opinion that a lover or two on hand was a cheerful thing for a house. In the days of Messrs. Hamerton and Rivers the effect had been very good, and she had liked these unwearied attendants, these unpaid officers of the household, who were always ready to get anything or do anything that might happen to be wanted. It was lonely to be without one of those hangers-on, and she accepted with a kind of mild enthusiasm the young man who had begun his probation by so striking an exhibition of his fitness for the post. It may be objected that her ready reception of a stranger without any introduction or guarantee of his position was imprudent in the extreme, for who could undertake that Rosalind might not accept this suitor with more ready sympathy than she had shown for the others? And there can be no doubt that this was the case; but as a matter of fact Mrs. Lennox was not prudent, and it was scarcely to be expected that she should exercise a virtue unfamiliar to her in respect to the young man who had, as she loved to repeat, saved the lives of the children. He was one of the Essex Everards, she made no doubt. She had always forgotten to ask him, and as, she said, they had never got upon the subject of his family, he had said nothing to her about them. But there was nothing wonderful in that. It is always pleasant when a young man does talk about his people, and lets you know how many brothers and sisters he has, and all the family history, but a great many young men don’t do so, and there was nothing at all wonderful about it in this case. A young man who is at Aix for the baths, who has been at most places where the travelling English go, who can talk like other people about Rome and Florence, not to speak of a great many out-of-the-way regions—it would be ridiculous to suppose that he was not “of our own class.” Even Aunt Sophy’s not very fastidious taste detected a few wants about him. He was not quite perfect in all points in his manners; he hesitated when a man in society would not have hesitated. He had not been at any university, nor even at a public school. All these things, however, Mrs. Lennox accounted for easily—when she took the trouble to think of them at all—by the supposition that he had been brought up at home, most likely in the country. “Depend upon it, he is an only child,” she said to Rosalind, “and he has been delicate—one can see that he is delicate still—and they have brought him up at home. Well, perhaps it is wrong—at least, all the gentlemen say so; but if I had an only child I think I should very likely do the same, and I am sure I feel very much for his poor mother. Why? Oh, because I don’t think he is strong, Rosalind. He colors like a girl when he makes any little mistake. He is not one of your bold young men that have a way of carrying off everything. He does make little mistakes, but then that is one of the things that is sure to happen when you bring boys up at home.”
Rosalind, who became more and more inclined as the days went on to take the best view of young Everard’s deficiencies, accepted very kindly this explanation. It silenced finally, she believed, that chill and horrible doubt, that question which she had put to herself broadly when she saw him first, which she did not even insinuate consciously now, but which haunted her, do what she would. Was he, perhaps, not exactly a gentleman? No, she did not ask that now. No doubt Aunt Sophy (who sometimes hit upon the right explanation, though she could not be called clever) was right, and the secret of the whole matter was that he had been brought up at home. There could be no doubt that the deficiencies which had at first suggested this most awful of all questions became rather interesting than otherwise when you came to know him better. They were what might be called ignorances, self-distrusts, an unassured condition of mind, rather than deficiencies; and his blush over his “little mistakes,” as Mrs. Lennox called them, and the half-uttered apology and the deprecatory look, took away from a benevolent observer all inclination towards unkindly criticism. Mrs. Lennox, who soon became “quite fond of” the young stranger, told him frankly when he did anything contrary to the code of society, and he took such rebukes in the very best spirit, but was unfortunately apt to forget and fall into the same blunder again. There were some of these mistakes which kept the ladies in amusement, and some which made Rosalind, as she became more and more “interested,” blush with hot shame—a far more serious feeling than that which made the young offender blush. For instance, when he found her sketch-book one morning, young Everard fell into ecstasies over the sketch Rosalind had been making of the lake on that eventful afternoon which had begun their intercourse. It was a very bad sketch, and Rosalind knew it. That golden sheet of water, full of light, full of reflections, with the sun blazing upon it, and the hills rising up on every side, and the sky looking down into its depths, had become a piece of yellow mud with daubs of blue and brown here and there, and the reeds in the foreground looked as if they had been cut out of paper and pasted on. “Don’t look at it. I can’t do very much, but yet I can do better than that,” she had said, finding him in rapt contemplation of her unsatisfactory performance, and putting out her hand to close the book. He looked up at her, for he was seated by the table, hanging over the sketch with rapture, with the most eager deprecation.
“I think it is lovely,” he said; “don’t try to take away my enjoyment. I wonder how any one can turn a mere piece of paper into a picture!”
“You are laughing at me,” said Rosalind, with a little offence.
“I—laughing! I would as soon laugh in church. I think it is beautiful. I can’t imagine how you do it. Why, there are the reflections in the water just as you see them. I never thought before that it was so pretty.”
“Oh!” Rosalind cried, drawing a long breath. It hurt her that he should say so, and it hurt still more to think that he was endeavoring to please her by saying so. “I am sure it is your kindness that makes you praise it; but, Mr. Everard, you must know that I am not quite ignorant. When you say such things of this daub it sounds like contempt—as if you thought I did not know better.”
“But suppose I don’t know any better?” he said, looking up at her with lustrous eyes full of humility, without even his usual self-disgust at having said something wrong. “Indeed, you must believe me, I don’t. It is quite true. Is it a fault, Miss Trevanion, when one does not know?”
What could Rosalind say? She stood with her hand put out towards the book, looking down upon the most expressive countenance, a face which of itself was a model for a painter. There was very little difference between them in age, perhaps a year or so to his advantage, not more; and something of the freemasonry of youth was between them, besides the more delicate link of sentiment. Yes, she said to herself, it was a fault. A man, a gentleman, should not be so ignorant. Something must be wrong before such ignorance could be. But how say this or anything like it to her companion, who threw himself so entirely upon her mercy? She closed the book that had been open before him and drew it hastily away.
“I am afraid,” she said, “your eye is not good; of course it is no fault except to think that I could be so silly, that I could accept praise which I don’t deserve.”
“Ah!” he said, “I see what you mean. You despise me for my ignorance, and it is true I am quite ignorant; but then how could I help it? I have never been taught.”
“Oh!” cried Rosalind again, thinking the apology worse than the fault, bad as that was. “But you have seen pictures—you have been in the galleries?”
“Without any instruction,” he said. “I do admire that, but I don’t care for the galleries. Oh, but I never say so except to you.”
She was silent in the dreadful situation in which she found herself. She did not know how to behave, such unutterable want of perception had never come in her way before.
“Then I suppose,” she said, with awful calm, “the chromo-lithographs, those are what you like? Mine is something like them, that is why you approve of it, I suppose?”
“I like it,” he said simply, “because you were doing it that day, and because that is where I saw you sitting when everything happened. And because the lake and the mountains and the sky all seem yours to me now.”
This speech was of a character very difficult to ignore and pass over as if it meant nothing. But Rosalind had now some experience, and was not unused to such situations. She said hurriedly, “I see—it is the association that interests you. I remember a very great person, a great author, saying something like that. He said it was the story of the pictures he liked, and when that pleased him he did not think so much about the execution. If he had not been a great person he would not have dared to say it. An artist, a true artist, would shiver to hear such a thing. But that explains why you like my daub. It is better than if you really thought it itself worthy of praise.”
“But I—” here young Everard paused; he saw by her eyes that he must not go any further, there was a little kindling of indignation in them. Where had he been all his life that he did not know any better than that? Had he gone on, Rosalind might not have been able to contain herself, and there were premonitory symptoms in the air.
“I wish,” he said, “that you would tell me what is nice and what isn’t.”
“Nice! Oh, Mr, Everard!” Rosalind breathed out with a shudder. “Perhaps you would call Michael Angelo nice,” she added, with a laugh.
“It is very likely that I might; you must forgive me. I have a relation who laughs at me in the same way, but how can one know if one has never been taught?”
“One is never taught such things,” it was on Rosalind’s lips to say, but with an impatient sigh she forbore. Afterwards, when she began to question herself on the subject, Rosalind took some comfort from the thought that Roland Hamerton knew almost as little about art as it is possible for a well-bred young Englishman to know. Ah! but that made all the difference. He knew enough to have thought her sketch a dreadful production; he knew enough to abhor the style of the chromo-lithograph. Even a man who has been brought up at home must have seen the pictures on his own walls. This thought cast her down again, but she began after this to break up into small morsels adapted to her companion’s comprehension the simplest principles of art, and to give him little hints about the fundamental matters which are part of a gentleman’s education in this respect, and even to indicate to him what terms are commonly used. He was very quick; he did not laugh out at her efforts as Roland would have done; he picked up the hints and adopted every suggestion—all which compliances pleased Rosalind in a certain sense, yet in another wrapped her soul in trouble, reviving again and again that most dreadful of all possible doubts, just when she thought that it had been safely laid to rest.
And yet all the while this daily companion made his way into something which, if not the heart, was dangerously near it, a sort of vestibule of the heart, where those who enter may hope to go further with good luck. He was ignorant in many ways. He did not know much more of books than of pictures—sometimes he expressed an opinion which took away her breath—and he was always on the watch for indications how far he might go; a sort of vigilance which was highly uncomfortable, and suggested some purpose on his part, some pursuit which was of more consequence to him than his natural opinions or traditions, all of which he seemed ready to sacrifice at a word. Rosalind was used to the ease of society, an ease, perhaps, more apparent than real, and this eagerness disconcerted her greatly. It was true that it might bear a flattering interpretation, if it was to recommend himself to her that he was ready to make all these sacrifices, to change even his opinions, to give up everything that could displease her. If all expedients are fair in love, is it not justifiable to watch that no word may offend, to express no liking unless it is sure to be in harmony with the tastes of the object loved, to be always on the alert and never to forget the purpose aimed at? This question might, perhaps, by impartial persons, be considered open to a doubt, but when one is one’s self the object of such profound homage it is natural that the judgment should be slightly biassed. And there was a certain personal charm about him notwithstanding all his deficiencies. It was difficult for a girl not to be touched by the devotion which shone upon her from such a pair of wonderful eyes.
