Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER XLV
While this intercourse was going on, and Mr. Everard became more and more the associate of the ladies, the little shock that had been given them by the result of Johnny’s excitement on the night of the accident grew into something definite and rather alarming. Johnny was not ill—so far as appeared, he was not even frightened; but he continued to see “the lady” from time to time, and more than once a cry from the room in which he slept had summoned Rosalind, and even Mrs. Lennox, forgetful of her rheumatism. On these occasions Johnny would be found sitting up in his bed, his great eyes like two lamps, shining even in the dim glow of the night-light. It was at an hour when he should have been asleep, when nurse had gone to her supper, and to that needful relaxation which nurses as well as other mortals require. The child was not frightened, but there was a certain excitement about this periodical awakening. “The lady! the lady!” he said. “Oh, my darling,” cried Aunt Sophy, trembling; “what lady? There could be no lady. You have been dreaming. Go to sleep, Johnny, and think of it no more.”
“I sawed her,” cried the child. He pushed away Mrs. Lennox and clung to Rosalind, who had her arms round him holding him fast. “I never was asleep at all, Rosy; I just closed my eyes, and then I opened them and I sawed the lady.”
“Oh, Rosalind, he has just been dreaming. Oh, Johnny dear, that is all nonsense; there was no lady!” Aunt Sophy cried.
“Tell me about her,” said Rosalind. “Was it a strange lady? Did you know who she was?”
“It is just the lady,” cried Johnny, impatiently. “I told you before. She is much more taller than Aunt Sophy, with a black thing over her head. She wouldn’t stay, because you came running, and she didn’t want you. But I want the lady to speak to me— I want her to speak to me. Go away, Rosy!” the little fellow cried.
“Dear, the lady will not come back again to-night. Tell me about her. Johnny, did you know who she was?”
“I told you: she’s just the lady,” cried Johnny, with the air of one whose explanation leaves nothing to be desired.
“Oh, Rosalind, you are just encouraging him in his nonsense. He was dreaming. My darling, you were dreaming. Nurse, here is this little boy been dreaming again about the lady, as he calls her. You must give him a dose. He must have got his little digestion all wrong. It can be nothing but that, you know,” Aunt Sophy said. She drew the nurse, who had hastened up from her hour’s relaxation in alarm, with her into the outer room. Mrs. Lennox herself was trembling. She clutched the woman’s arm with a nervous grasp. “What does he mean about this lady? Is there any story about a lady? I am quite sure it is all nonsense, or that it is just a dream,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a nervous flutter in the bow of her cap. “Is there any story (though it is all nonsense) of a haunted room or anything of that sort? If there is, I sha’n’t stay here, not another day.”
The nurse, however, had heard no such story: she stood whispering with her mistress, talking over this strange occurrence, while Rosalind soothed and quieted the excited child. Amy’s little bed was in the outer room, but all was still there, the child never stirring, so absolutely noiseless that her very presence was forgotten by the two anxious women comparing notes. “He always keeps to the same story,” said nurse. “I can’t tell what to make of it, ma’am, but Master Johnny always was a little strange.”
“What do you mean by a little strange? He is a dear child, he never gives any trouble, he is just a darling,” Aunt Sophy said. “It is his digestion that has got a little wrong. A shock like that of the other day—it sometimes will not tell for some time, and as often as not it puts their little stomachs wrong. A little medicine will set everything right.”
Nurse demurred to this, having notions of her own, and the discussion went on till Rosalind, who had persuaded Johnny to compose himself, and sat by him till he fell asleep, came out and joined them. “It will be better for you not to leave him without calling me or some one,” she said.
“Miss Rosalind!” cried nurse, with natural desperation, “children is dreadfully tiring to have them all day long, and every day. And nurses is only flesh and blood like other people. If I’m never to have a moment’s rest, day nor night, I think I shall go off my head.”
All this went on in the room where little Amy lay asleep. She was so still that she was not considered at all. She was, indeed, at all times so little disposed to produce herself or make any call upon the attention of those about her, that the family, as is general, took poor little Amy at her own showing and left her to herself. It did not even seem anything remarkable that she was so still—and nobody perceived the pair of wide-open eyes with which she watched all that was going on under the corner of the coverlet. Even Rosalind scarcely looked towards her little sister’s bed, and all the pent-up misery and terror which a child can conceal (and how much that implies) lay unconsoled and unlightened in poor little Amy’s breast. Meanwhile Johnny had fallen fast asleep, untroubled by any further thought of the apparition which only he was supposed to have seen.
This brought a great deal of trouble into the minds of Johnny’s guardians. Mrs. Lennox was so nearly breaking down under a sense of the responsibility that her rheumatism, instead of improving with her baths, grew worse than ever, and she became so stiff that Rosalind and Everard together were needed, each at one arm, to raise her from her chair. The doctor was sent for, who examined Johnny, and, after hearing all the story, concluded that it was suppressed gout in the child’s system, and that baths to bring it out would be the best cure. He questioned Mrs. Lennox so closely as to her family and all their antecedents that it very soon appeared a certain fact that all the Trevanions had suffered from suppressed gout, which explained everything, and especially all peculiarities in the mind or conduct. “The little boy,” said the doctor, who spoke English so well, “is the victim of the physiological sins of his forefathers. Pardon, madam; I do not speak in a moral point of view. They drank Oporto wine and he sees what you call ghosts; the succession is very apparent. This child,” turning to Amy, who stood by, “she also has suppressed gout.”
“Oh, Amy is quite well,” cried Aunt Sophy; “there is nothing at all the matter with Amy. But it cannot be denied that there is gout in the family. Indeed, when gentlemen come to a certain age they always suffer in that way, though I am sure I don’t know why. My poor father and grandfather, too, as I have always heard. Your papa, Rosalind, with him it was the heart.”
“They are all connected. Rheumatism, it is the brother of gout, and rheumatism is the tyrant which affects the heart. No, my dear young lady, it is not the emotions, nor love, nor disappointment, nor any of the pretty things you think; it is rheumatism that is most fatal for the heart. I will settle for the little boy a course of baths, and he will see no more ladies; that is,” said the doctor, with a wave of his hand, “except the very charming ladies whom he has a right to see. But this child, she has it more pronounced; she is more ill than the little boy.”
“Oh, no, doctor, it is only that Amy is always pale; there is nothing the matter with her. Do you feel anything the matter with you, Amy, my dear?”
“No, Aunt Sophy,” said the little girl in a very low voice, turning her head away.
“I told you so; there is nothing the matter with her. She is a pale little thing. She never has any color. But Johnny! Doctor, oh, I hope you will do your best for Johnny! He quite destroys all our peace and comfort. I am afraid to open my eyes after I go to bed, lest I should see the lady too; for that sort of thing is very catching. You get it into your mind. If there is any noise I can’t account for, I feel disposed to scream. I am sure I shall be seeing it before long if Johnny gets no better. But I have always supposed in such cases that it was the digestion that was out of order,” Mrs. Lennox said, returning, but doubtfully, to her original view.
“It is all the same thing,” said the doctor, cheerfully waving his hand; and then he patted Johnny on the head, who was half overawed, half pleased, to have an illness which procured unlimited petting without any pain. The little fellow began his baths immediately, but next night he saw the lady again. This time he woke and found her bending over him, and gave forth the cry which was now so well known by all the party. Mrs. Lennox, who rushed into the room the first, being in her own chamber, which was near Johnny’s, had to be led back to the sitting-room in a state of nervous prostration, trembling and sobbing. When she was placed in her chair and a glass of wine administered to her, she declared that she had seen it too. “Oh, how can you ask me what it was? I saw something move. Do you think,” with a gasp, “Rosalind, that one can keep one’s wits about one, with all that going on? I am sure I saw something—something black go out of the door—or at least something moved. The curtain? oh, how can you say it was the curtain? I never thought of that. Are you sure you didn’t see anything, Rosalind?”
“I saw the wind in the curtain, Aunt Sophy: the window was open, and it blew out and almost frightened me too.”
“Oh, I could not say I was frightened,” said Mrs. Lennox, grasping Rosalind’s hand tight. “A curtain does bulge out with the wind, doesn’t it? I never thought of that. I saw something—move—I—wasn’t frightened, only a little nervous. Perhaps it was—the wind in the curtain. You are sure you were frightened too.”
“It blew right out upon me, like some one coming to meet me.”
Aunt Sophy grasped Rosalind’s hand tight. “It must have some explanation,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything super— You don’t believe in—that sort of thing, Rosalind?”
“Dear Aunt Sophy, I am sure it was the curtain. I saw it too. I would not say so if I did not feel—sure—”
“Oh, my dear, what a comfort it is to have a cool head like yours. You’re not carried away by your feelings like me. I’m so sympathetic, I feel as other people feel; to hear Johnny cry just made me I can’t tell how. It was dreadfully like some one moving, Rosalind.”
“Yes, Aunt Sophy. When the wind got into the folds, it was exactly like some one moving.”
“You are sure it was the curtain, Rosalind.”
Poor Rosalind was as little sure as any imaginative girl could be; she, too, was very much shaken by Johnny’s vision; at her age it is so much more easy to believe in the supernatural than in spectral illusions or derangement of the digestion. She did not believe that the stomach was the source of fancy, or that imagination only meant a form of suppressed gout. Her nerves were greatly disturbed, and she was as ready to see anything, if seeing depended upon an excited condition, as any young and impressionable person ever was. She was glad to soothe Mrs. Lennox with an easy explanation. But Rosalind did not believe that it was the curtain which had deceived Johnny. Neither did she believe in the baths, or in the suppressed gout. She was convinced in her mind that the child spoke the truth, and that it was some visitor from the unseen who came to him. But who was it? Dark fears crossed her mind, and many a wistful wonder. There were no family warnings among the Trevanions, or it is to be feared that reason would have yielded in Rosalind’s mind to nature and faith. As it was, her heart grew feverish and expectant. The arrival of the letters from England every morning filled her with terror. She dreaded to see a black-bordered envelope, a messenger of death.
CHAPTER XLVI
Johnny throve, notwithstanding his visions. He woke up in the morning altogether unaffected, so far as appeared, by what he saw at night. He had always been more or less the centre of interest, both by dint of being the only male member of the party and because he was the youngest, and he was more than ever the master of the situation now. He did not mind his baths, and he relished the importance of his position. So much time as Mrs. Lennox had free from her “cure” was entirely occupied with Johnny. She thought he wanted “nourishment” of various dainty kinds, to which the little fellow had not the least objection. Secretly in her heart Aunt Sophy was opposed to the idea of suppressed gout, and clung to that of impaired digestion. Delicate fricassees of chicken, game, the earliest products of la chasse, she ordered for him instead of the roast mutton of old. He had fine custards and tempting jellies, while Sophy and Amy ate their rice pudding; and in the intervals between his meals Aunt Sophy administered glasses of wine, cups of jelly, hunches of spongecake, to the boy. He took it all with the best grace in the world—and an appetite which it was a pleasure to see—and throve and grew, but nevertheless still saw the lady at intervals with a pertinacity which was most discouraging. It may be supposed that an incident so remarkable had not passed without notice in the curious little community of the hotel. And the first breath of it, whispered by nurse in the ear of some confidante, brought up the landlady from the bureau in a painful condition of excitement, first to inquire and then to implore that complete secrecy might be kept on the matter. Madame protested that there was no ghost in her well-regulated house. If the little boy saw anything it must be a ghost whom the English family had brought with them: such things, it was well known, did exist in English houses. But there were no ghosts in Aix, much less in the Hotel Venat. To request ladies in the middle of their cure to find other quarters was impossible, not to say that Madame Lennox and her charming family were quite the most distinguished party at the hotel, and one which she would not part with on any consideration; but if the little monsieur continued to have his digestion impaired (and she could recommend a most excellent tisane that worked marvels), might she beg ces dames to keep silence on the subject? The reputation of a hotel was like that of a woman, and if once breathed upon— Mrs. Lennox remained in puzzling and puzzled silence for some time after this visit was over. About a quarter of an hour after her thought burst forth.
“Rosalind! I don’t feel at all reassured by what that woman said. Why should she make all that talk about the house if there wasn’t some truth in it? It is a very creepy, disagreeable thing to think of, and us living on the very brink of it, so to speak. But, after all, what if Johnny’s lady should be something—some—appearance, some mystery about the house?”
“You thought it was Johnny’s digestion, Aunt Sophy.”
“So I did: but then, you know, one says that sort of thing when one can’t think of anything else. I believe it is his digestion, but, at the same time, how can one tell what sort of things may have happened in great big foreign houses, and so many queer people coming and going? There might have been a murder or something, for anything we know.”
This suggestion awoke a tremor in Rosalind’s heart, for she was not very strong-minded, nor fortified by any consistent opinion in respect to ghosts. She said somewhat faintly, with a laugh, “I never heard of a ghost in a hotel.”
“In a hotel? I should think a hotel was just the sort of place, with all kinds of strange people. Mind, however,” said Aunt Sophy after a pause, “I don’t believe in ghosts at all, not at all; there are no such things. Only foolish persons, servants and the uneducated, put any faith in them (it was the entrance of Amy and Sophy in the midst of this discussion that called forth such a distinct profession of faith); and now your Uncle John is coming,” she added cheerfully, “and it will all be cleared up and everything will come right.”
“Will Uncle John clear up about the lady?” said Sophy, with a toss of her little impertinent head. “He will just laugh, I know. He will say he wished he had ladies come to see him like that. Uncle John,” said this small critic, “is never serious at all about us children. Oh, perhaps about you grown-up people; but he will just laugh, I know. And so shall I laugh. All the fuss that is made is because Johnny is the boy. Me and Amy, we might see elephants and you would not mind, Aunt Sophy. It is because Johnny is the boy.”
“You are a little impertinent! I think just as much about Amy—and the child is looking pale, don’t you think so, Rosalind? But you are never disturbed in your sleep, my pet, nor take things in your little head. You are the quietest little woman. Indeed, I wish she would be naughty sometimes, Rosalind. What is the matter with you, dear? Don’t you want me to talk to you? Well, if my arm is disagreeable, Amy—”
“Oh, no, no, Aunt Sophy!” cried the child, with an impetuous kiss, but she extricated herself notwithstanding, and went away to the farther window, where she sat down on a footstool, half hidden among the curtains. The two ladies, looking at her, began to remember at the same moment that this had become Amy’s habitual place. She was always so quiet that to become a little quieter was not remarked in her as it would have been in the other children: she had always been pale, but not so pale as now. The folds of the long white curtain, falling half over her, added to the delicacy of her aspect. She seemed to shrink and hide herself from their gaze, though she was not conscious of it.
“Dear me!” said Aunt Sophy, “perhaps there is something after all in the doctor’s idea of suppressed gout being in the family. You don’t show any signs of it, Rosalind, Heaven be praised! or Sophy either; but just look at that child, how pale she is!”
Rosalind did not make any reply. She called her little sister to her presently, but Amy declared that she was “reading a book,” which was, under Mrs. Lennox’s sway, a reason above all others for leaving the little student undisturbed. Mrs. Lennox had not been used to people who were given to books, and she admired the habit greatly. “Don’t call her if she is reading, Rosalind. I wonder how it is the rest of you don’t read. But Amy always has her book. Perhaps it is because of reading so much that she is so pale. Well, Uncle John is coming to-morrow, and he will want the children to take long walks, and I dare say all this little confusion will blow away. I wish John had come a little sooner; he might have tried the ‘cure’ as well as me, for I am sure he has rheumatism, if not gout. Gentlemen always have one or the other when they come to your uncle’s age, and it might have saved him an illness later,” said Aunt Sophy. She had to go away in her chair, in a few minutes, for her bath, and it was this that made her think what an excellent thing it would be for John.
When she had gone, Rosalind sat very silent with her two little sisters in the room. Sophy went on talking, while Rosalind mused and kept silent. She was so well accustomed to Sophy talking that she took little notice of it. When the little girl said anything of sufficient importance to penetrate the mist of self-abstraction in which her sister sat, Rosalind would answer her. But generally she took little notice. She woke up, however, in the midst of one of Sophy’s sentences which caught her ear, she could not tell why.
“Think it’s a real lady?” Sophy said. It was at the end of a long monologue, during which her somewhat sharp voice had run on monotonous without variety. “Think it’s a real lady? There could be no ghost here, or if there was, why should it go to Johnny, who don’t understand, who has no sense. I think it’s a real lady that comes in to look at the children. Perhaps she is fond of children; perhaps she’s not in her right mind,” said Sophy; “perhaps she has lost a little boy like Johnny; perhaps—” here she clapped her hands together, which startled Rosalind greatly, and made little Amy, looking up with big eyes from within the curtain, jump from her seat; “I know who it is—it is the lady that gave him the toy.”
“The toy—what toy?”
“Oh, you know very well, Rosalind. That is what it is—the lady that had lost a child like Johnny, that brought him that thing that you wind up, that runs, that nurse says must have cost a mint of money. She says mint of money, and why shouldn’t I? I shall watch to-night, and try if I can’t see her,” cried Sophy; “that is the lady! and Johnny is such a little silly he has never found it out. But it is a real lady, that I am quite certain, whatever the children say.”
“But Amy has never seen anything, Sophy, or heard anything,” Rosalind said.
“Oh, Rosalind, how soft you are! How could she help hearing about it, with Aunt Sophy and you rampaging in the room every night! You don’t know how deep she is; she would just go on and go on, and never tell.”
“Amy, come here,” said Rosalind.
“Oh, please, Rosy! I am in such an interesting part.”
“Amy, come here—you can go back to your book after. Sophy says you have heard about the lady Johnny thinks he sees.”
“Yes, Rosalind.”
“You have known about her perhaps all the time, though we thought you slept so sound and heard nothing! You don’t mean that you have seen her too?”
Amy stood by her sister’s knee, her hand reluctantly allowing itself to be held in Rosalind’s hand. She submitted to this questioning with the greatest reluctance, her little frame all instinct with eagerness to get away. But here she gave a hasty look upward as if drawn by the attraction of Rosalind’s eyes. How strange that no one had remarked how white and small she had grown! She gave her sister a solemn, momentary look, with eyes that seemed to expand as they looked, but said nothing.
“Amy, can’t you answer me?” Rosalind cried.
Amy’s eyelids grew big with unwilling tears, and she made a great effort to draw away her hand.
“Tell me, Amy, is there anything you can’t tell Rosalind? You shall not be worried or scolded, but tell me.”
There was a little pause, and then the child flung her arms round her sister’s neck and hid her face. “Oh, Rosalind!”
“Yes, my darling, what is it? Tell me!”
Amy clung as if she would grow there, and pressed her little head, as if the contact strengthened her, against the fair pillar of Rosalind’s throat. But apparently it was easier to cling there and give vent to a sob or two than to speak. She pressed closer and closer, but she made no reply.
“She has seen her every time,” said Sophy, “only she’s such a story she won’t tell. She is always seeing her. When you think she’s asleep she is lying all shivering and shaking with the sheet over her head. That is how I found out. She is so frightened she can’t go to sleep. I said I should tell Rosalind; Rosalind is the eldest, and she ought to know. But then, Amy thinks—”
“What, Sophy?”
“Well, that you are only our half-sister. You are only our half-sister, you know. We all think that, and perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”
To Rosalind’s heart this sting of mistrust went sharp and keen, notwithstanding the close strain of the little girl’s embrace which seemed to protest against the statement. “Is it really, really so?” she cried, in a voice of anguish. “Do you think I am not your real sister, you little ones? Have I done anything to make you think—”
“Oh, no, no! Oh, Rosalind, no! Oh, no, no!” cried the little girl, clasping closer and closer. The ghost, if it was a ghost, the “lady” who, Sophy was sure, was a “real lady,” disappeared in the more immediate pressure of this poignant question. Even Rosalind, who had now herself to be consoled, forgot, in the pang of personal suffering, to inquire further.
And they were still clinging together in excitement and tears when the door was opened briskly, and Uncle John, all brown and dusty and smiling, a day too soon, and much pleased with himself for being so, suddenly marched into the room. A more extraordinary change of sentiment could not be conceived. The feminine tears dried up in a moment, the whole aspect of affairs changed. He was so strong, so brown, so cordial, so pleased to see them, so full of cheerful questions, and the account of what he had done. “Left London only yesterday,” he said, “and here I am. What’s the matter with Amy? Crying! You must let her off, Rosalind, whatever the sin may be, for my sake.”
