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Маргарет Олифант
Madam

CHAPTER LI

Mrs. Lennox was struck dumb with amazement when she heard what her brother’s morning’s occupation had been. “Taken a house!” she cried, with a scream which summoned the whole party round her. But presently she consoled herself, and found it the best step which possibly could have been taken. It was a pretty place; and she could there complete her “koor” without let or hinderance. The other members of the party adapted themselves to it with the ease of youth; but there were many protests on the part of the people in the hotel; and to young Everard the news at first seemed fatal. He could not understand how it was that he met none of the party during the afternoon. In ordinary circumstances he crossed their path two or three times at least, and by a little strategy could make sure of being in Rosalind’s company for a considerable part of every day, having, indeed, come to consider himself, and being generally considered, as one of Mrs. Lennox’s habitual train. He thought at first that they had gone away altogether, and his despair was boundless. But very soon the shock was softened, and better things began to appear possible. Next day he met Mrs. Lennox going to her bath, and not only did she stop to explain everything to him, and tell him all about the new house, which was so much nicer than the hotel, but, led away by her own flood of utterance, and without thinking what John would say, she invited him at once to dinner.

“Dinner is rather a weak point,” she said, “but there is something to eat always, if you don’t mind taking your chance.”

“I would not mind, however little there might be,” he said, beaming. “I thought you had gone away, and I was in despair.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Lennox said. But then she began to think what John would say.

John did not say very much when, in the early dusk, Everard, in all the glories of evening dress, made his appearance in the drawing-room at Bonport, which was furnished with very little except the view. But then the view was enough to cover many deficiencies. The room was rounded, almost the half of the wall being window, which was filled at all times, when there was light enough to see it, with one of those prospects of land and water which never lose their interest, and which take as many variations, as the sun rises and sets upon them, and the clouds and shadows flit over them, and the light pours out of the skies, as does an expressive human face. The formation of the room aided the effect by making this wonderful scene the necessary background of everything that occurred within; in that soft twilight the figures were as shadows against the brightness which still lingered upon the lake. John Trevanion stood against it, black in his height and massive outline, taking the privilege of his manhood and darkening for the others the remnant of daylight that remained. Mrs. Lennox’s chair had been placed in a corner, as she liked it to be, out of what she called the draught, and all that appeared of her was one side of a soft heap, a small mountain, of drapery; while on the other hand, Rosalind, slim and straight, a soft whiteness, appeared against the trellis of the veranda. The picture was all in shadows, uncertain, visionary, save for the outline of John Trevanion, which was very solid and uncompromising, and produced a great effect amid the gentle vagueness of all around. The young man faltered on the threshold at sight of him, feeling none of the happy, sympathetic security which he had felt in the company of the ladies and the children. Young Everard was in reality too ignorant of society and its ways to have thought of the inevitable interviews with guardians and investigations into antecedents which would necessarily attend any possible engagement with a girl in Rosalind’s position. But there came a cold shiver over him when he saw the man’s figure opposite to him as he entered, and a prevision of an examination very different from anything he had calculated upon came into his mind. For a moment the impulse of flight seized him; but that was impossible, and however terrible the ordeal might be it was evident that he must face it. It was well for him, however, that it was so dark that the changes of his color and hesitation of his manner were not so visible as they would otherwise have been. Mrs. Lennox was of opinion that he was shy—perhaps even more shy than usual from the fact that John was not so friendly as, in view of what Mr. Everard had done for the children, he ought to have been. And she did her best accordingly to encourage the visitor. The little interval before dinner, in the twilight, when they could not see each other, was naturally awkward, and, except by herself, little was said; but she had a generally well-justified faith in the effect of dinner as a softening and mollifying influence. When, however, the party were seated in the dining-room round the shaded lamp, which threw a brilliant light on the table, and left the faces round it in a sort of pink shadow, matters were little better than before. The undesired guest, who had not self-confidence enough to appear at his ease, attempted, after a while, to entertain Mrs. Lennox with scraps of gossip from the hotel, though always in a deprecating tone and with an apologetic humility; but this conversation went on strangely in the midst of an atmosphere hushed by many agitations, where the others were kept silent by thoughts and anxieties too great for words. John Trevanion, who could scarcely contain himself or restrain his inclination to take this young intruder by the throat and compel him to explain who he was, and what he did here, and Rosalind, who had looked with incredulous apathy at the telegram her uncle had received from Mrs. Trevanion’s lawyers, informing him that nothing had happened to her, so far as they were aware, sat mute, both of them, listening to the mild chatter without taking any part in it. Mrs. Lennox wagged, if not her head, at least the laces of her cap, as she discussed the company at the table d’hôte. “And these people were Russians, after all?” she said. “Why, I thought them English, and you remember Rosalind and you, Mr. Everard, declared they must be German; and all the time they were Russians. How very odd! And it was the little man who was the lady’s husband! Well, I never should have guessed that. Yes, I knew our going away would make a great gap—so many of us, you know. But we have got some friends coming. Do you mean to take rooms at the Venat for Mr. Rivers, John? And then there is Roland Hamerton—”

“Is Roland Hamerton coming here?”

“With Rex, I think. Oh, yes, he is sure to come—he is great friends with Rex. I am so glad the boy should have such a steady, nice friend. But we cannot take him in at Bonport, and of course he never would expect such a thing. Perhaps you will mention at the bureau, Mr. Everard, that some friends of mine will be wanting rooms.”

“I had no idea,” said John, with a tone of annoyance, “that so large a party was expected.”

“Rex?” said Mrs. Lennox, with simple audacity. “Well, I hope you don’t think I could refuse our own boy when he wanted to come.”

“He ought to have been at school,” the guardian grumbled under his breath.

“John! when you agreed yourself he was doing no good at school; and the masters said so, and everybody. And he is too young to go to Oxford; and whatever you may think, John, I am very glad to know that a nice, good, steady young man like Roland Hamerton has taken such a fancy to Rex. Oh, yes, he has taken a great fancy to him—he is staying with him now. It shows that though the poor boy may be a little wilful, he is thoroughly nice in his heart. Though even without that,” said Mrs. Lennox, ready to weep, “I should always be glad to see Roland Hamerton, shouldn’t you, Rosalind? He is always good and kind, and we have known him, and Rosalind has known him, all his life.”

Rosalind made no reply to this appeal. She was in no mood to say anything, to take any part in common conversation. Her time of peace and repose was over. If there had been nothing else, the sudden information only now conveyed to her of the coming of Rivers and of Hamerton, with what motive she knew too well, would have been enough to stop her mouth. She heard this with a thrill of excitement, of exasperation, and at the same time of alarm, which is far from the state of mind supposed by the visionary philosopher to whom it seems meet that a good girl should have seven suitors. Above all, the name of Rivers filled her with alarm. He was a man who was a stranger, who would insist upon an answer, and probably think himself ill-used if that answer was not favorable. With so many subjects of thought already weighing upon her, to have this added made her brain swim. And when she looked up and caught, from the other side of the table, a wistful gaze from those eyes which had so long haunted her imagination, Rosalind’s dismay was complete. She shrank into herself with a troubled consciousness that all the problems of life were crowding upon her, and at a moment when she had little heart to consider any personal question at all, much less such a one as this.

The party round the dinner-table was thus a very agitated one, and by degrees less and less was said. The movements of the servants—Mrs. Lennox’s agile courier and John Trevanion’s solemn English attendant, whose face was like wood—became very audible, the chief action of the scene. To Everard the silence, broken only by these sounds and by Mrs. Lennox’s voice coming in at intervals, was as the silence of fate. He made exertions which were really stupendous to find something to say, to seize the occasion and somehow divert the catastrophe which, though he did not know what it would be, he felt to be hanging over his head; but his throat was dry and his lips parched, notwithstanding the wine which he swallowed in his agitation, and not a word would come. When the ladies rose to leave the table, he felt that the catastrophe was very near. He was paralyzed by their sudden movement, which he had not calculated upon, and had not even presence of mind to open the door for them as he ought to have done, but stood gazing with his mouth open and his napkin in his hand, to find himself alone and face to face with John Trevanion. He had not thought of this terrible ordeal. In the hotel life to which he had of late been accustomed, the awful interval after dinner is necessarily omitted, and Everard had not been brought up in a society which sits over its wine. When he saw John Trevanion bearing down upon him with his glass of wine in his hand, to take Mrs. Lennox’s place, he felt that he did not know to what trial this might be preliminary, and turned towards his host with a sense of danger and terror which nothing in the circumstances seemed to justify, restraining with an effort the gasp in his throat. John began, innocently enough, by some remark about the wine. It was very tolerable wine, better than might have been expected in a country overrun by visitors. “But I suppose the strangers will be going very soon, as I hear the season is nearly over. Have you been long here?”

“A month—six weeks I mean—since early in August.”

“And did you come for the ‘cure’? You must have taken a double allowance.”

“It was not exactly for the cure; at least I have stayed on—for other reasons.”

“Pardon me if I seem inquisitive,” said John Trevanion. “It was you, was it not, whom I met in the village at Highcourt two years ago?”

“Yes, it was I.”

“That was a very unlikely place to meet; more unlikely than Aix. I must ask your pardon again, Mr. Everard; you will allow that when I find you here, almost a member of my sister’s family, I have a right to inquire. Do you know that there were very unpleasant visitors at Highcourt in search of you after you were gone?”

The young man looked at him with eyes expanding and dilating—where had he seen such eyes?—a deep crimson flush, and a look of such terror and anguish that John Trevanion’s good heart was touched. He had anticipated a possible bravado of denial, which would have given him no difficulty, but this was much less easy to deal with.

“Mr. Trevanion,” Everard said, with lips so parched that he to moisten them before he could speak, “that was a mistake, it was indeed! That was all arranged; you would not put me to shame for a thing so long past, and that was entirely a mistake! It was put right in every way, every farthing was paid. A great change happened to me at that time of my life. I had been kept out of what I had a right to, and badly treated. But after that a change occurred. I can assure you, and the people themselves would tell you. I can give their address.”

“I should not have spoken to you on the subject if I had not been disposed to accept any explanation you could make,” said John Trevanion; which was but partially true so far as his intention went, although it was impossible to doubt an explanation which was so evidently sincere. After this there ensued a silence, during which Everard, the excitement in his mind growing higher and higher, turned over every subject on which he thought it possible that he could be questioned further. He thought, as he sat there drawn together on his defence, eagerly yet stealthily examining the countenance of this inquisitor, that he had thought of everything and could not be taken by surprise. Nevertheless his heart gave a great bound of astonishment when John Trevanion spoke again. The question he put was perhaps the only one for which the victim was unprepared. “Would you mind telling me,” he said, with great gravity and deliberation, “what connection there was between you and my brother, the late Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt?”

CHAPTER LII

The moon was shining in full glory upon the lake, so brilliant and broad that the great glittering expanse of water retained something like a tinge of its natural blue in the wonderful splendor of the light. It was not a night on which to keep in-doors. Mrs. Lennox, in the drawing-room, after she had left her protégé to the tender mercies of John, had been a little hysterical, or, at least, as she allowed, very much “upset.” “I don’t know what has come over John,” she said; “I think his heart is turned to stone. Oh, Rosalind, how could you keep so still? You that have such a feeling for the children, and saw the way that poor young fellow was being bullied. It is a thing I will not put up with in my house—if it can be said that this is my house. Yes, bullied. John has never said a word to him! And I am sure he is going to make himself disagreeable now, and when there is nobody to protect him—and he is so good and quiet and takes it all so well,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a great confusion of persons, “for our sakes.”

Rosalind did her best to soothe and calm her aunt’s excitement, and at last succeeded in persuading her that she was very tired, and had much better go to bed. “Oh, yes, I am very tired. What with my bath, and the trouble of removing down here, and having to think of the dinners, and all this trouble about Johnny and Amy, and your uncle that shows so little feeling—of course, I am very tired. Most people would have been in bed an hour ago. If you think you can remember my message to poor Mr. Everard: to tell him never to mind John; that it is just his way and nobody takes any notice of it; and say good-night to him for me. But you know you have a very bad memory, Rosalind, and you will never tell him the half of that.”

“If I see him, Aunt Sophy; but he may not come in here at all.”

“Oh, you may trust him to come in,” Aunt Sophy said; and with a renewed charge not to forget, she finally rang for her maid, and went away, with all her little properties, to bed. Rosalind did not await the interview which Mrs. Lennox was so certain of. She stole out of the window, which stood wide open like a door, into the moonlight. Everything was so still that the movements of the leaves, as they rustled faintly, took importance in the great quiet; and the dip of an oar into the water, which took place at slow intervals, somewhere about the middle of the lake, where some romantic visitors were out in the moonlight, was almost a violent interruption. Rosalind stepped out into the soft night with a sense of escape, not thinking much perhaps of the messages with which she had been charged. The air was full of that faint but all-pervading fragrance made up of odors, imperceptible in themselves, which belong to the night, and the moon made everything sacred, spreading a white beatitude even over the distant peaks of the hills. The girl, in her great trouble and anxiety, felt soothed and stilled, without any reason, by those ineffable ministrations of nature which are above all rule. She avoided the gravel, which rang and jarred under her feet, and wandered across the dry grass, which was burned brown with the heat, not like the verdant English turf, towards the edge of the slope. She had enough to think of, but, for the moment, in the hush of the night, did not think at all, but gave herself over to the tranquillizing calm. Her cares went from her for the time; the light and the night together went to her heart. Sometimes this quiet will come unsought to those who are deeply weighted with pain and anxiety; and Rosalind was very young; and when all nature says it so unanimously, how is a young creature to contradict, and say that all will not be well? Even the old and weary will be deceived, and take that on the word of the kind skies and hushed, believing earth. She strayed about among the great laurels and daphnes, under the shadow of the trees, with her spirit calmed and relieved from the pressure of troublous events and thoughts. She had forgotten, in that momentary exaltation, that any interruption was possible, and stood, clearly visible in the moonlight, looking out upon the lake, when she heard the sound behind her of an uncertain step coming out upon the veranda, then, crossing the gravel path, coming towards her. She had not any thought of concealing herself, nor had she time to do so, when Everard came up to her, breathless with haste, and what seemed to be excitement. He said quickly, “You were not in the drawing-room, and the window was open. I thought you would not mind if I came after you.” Rosalind looked up at him somewhat coldly, for she had forgotten he was there.

“I thought you had gone,” she said, turning half towards him, as if—which was true—she did not mean to be disturbed. His presence had a jarring effect, and broke the enchantment of the scene. He was always instantly sensitive to any rebuff.

“I thought,” he repeated apologetically, “that you would not mind. You have always made me feel so much—so much at home.”

These ill-chosen words roused Rosalind’s pride. “My aunt,” she said, “has always been very glad to see you, Mr. Everard, and grateful to you for what you have done for us.”

“Is that all?” he said hastily; “am I always to have those children thrown in my teeth? I thought now, by this time, that you might have cared for me a little for myself; I thought we had taken to each other,” he added, with a mixture of irritation and pathos, with the straightforward sentiment of a child; “for you know very well,” he cried, after a pause, “that it is not for nothing I am always coming; that it is not for the children, nor for your aunt, nor for anything but you. You know that I think of nothing but you.”

The young man’s voice was hurried and tremulous with real feeling, and the scene was one, above all others, in harmony with a love tale; and Rosalind’s heart had been touched by many a soft illusion in respect to the speaker, and had made him, before she knew him, the subject of many a dream; but at this supreme moment a strange effect took place in her. With a pang, acute as if it had been cut off by a blow, the mist of illusion was suddenly severed, and floated away from her, leaving her eyes cold and clear. A sensation of shame that she should ever have been deceived, that she could have deceived him, ran hot through all her being. “I think,” she said quickly, “Mr. Everard, that you are speaking very wildly. I know nothing at all of why you come, of what you are thinking.” Her tone was indignant, almost haughty, in spite of herself.

“Ah!” he cried, “I know what you think; you think that I am not as good as you are, that I’m not a gentleman. Rosalind, if you knew who I was you would not think that. I could tell you about somebody that you are very, very fond of; ay! and make it easy for you to see her and be with her as much as ever you pleased, if you would listen to me. If you only knew, there are many, many things I could do for you. I could clear up a great deal if I chose. I could tell you much you want to know if I chose. I have been fighting off John Trevanion, but I would not fight off you. If you will only promise me a reward for it; if you will let your heart speak; if you will give me what I am longing for, Rosalind!”

He poured forth all this with such impassioned haste, stammering with excitement and eagerness, that she could but partially understand the sense, and not at all the extraordinary meaning and intention with which he spoke. She stood with her face turned to him, angry, bewildered, feeling that the attempt to catch the thread of something concealed and all-important in what he said was more than her faculties were equal to; and on the surface of her mind was the indignation and almost shame which such an appeal, unjustified by any act of hers, awakens in a sensitive girl. The sound of her own name from his lips seemed to strike her as if he had thrown a stone at her. “Mr. Everard,” she cried, scarcely knowing what words she used, “you have no right to call me Rosalind. What is it you mean?”

“Ah!” he cried, with a laugh, “you ask me that! you want to have what I can give, but give me nothing in return.”

“I think,” said Rosalind, quickly, “that you forget yourself, Mr. Everard. A gentleman, if he has anything to tell, does not make bargains. What is it, about some one, whom you say I love—” She began to tremble very much, and put her hands together in an involuntary prayer! “Oh, if it should be—Mr. Everard! I will thank you all my life if you will tell me—”

“Promise me you will listen to me, Rosalind; promise me! I don’t want your thanks; I want your—love. I have been after you for a long, long time; oh, before anything happened. Promise me—”

He put out his hands to clasp hers, but this was more than she could bear. She recoiled from him, with an unconscious revelation of her distaste, almost horror, of these advances, which stung his self-esteem. “You won’t!” he cried, hoarsely; “I am to give everything and get nothing? Then I won’t neither, and that is enough for to-night—”

He had got on the gravel again, in his sudden, angry step backward, and turned on his heel, crushing the pebbles with a sound that seemed to jar through all the atmosphere. After he had gone a few steps he paused, as if expecting to be called back. But Rosalind’s heart was all aflame. She said to herself, indignantly, that to believe such a man had anything to tell her was folly, was a shame to think of, was impossible. To chaffer and bargain with him, to promise him anything—her love, oh Heaven! how dared he ask it?—was intolerable. She turned away with hot, feminine impulse, and a step in which there was no pause or wavering; increasing the distance between them at a very different rate from that achieved by his lingering steps. It seemed that he expected to be recalled after she had disappeared altogether and hidden herself, panting, among the shadows; for she could still hear his step pause with that jar and harsh noise upon the gravel for what seemed to her, in her excitement, an hour of suspense. And Rosalind’s heart jarred, as did all the echoes. Harsh vibrations of pain went through and through it. The rending away of her own self-illusion in respect to him, which was not unmingled with a sense of guilt—for that illusion had been half voluntary, a fiction of her own creating, a refuge of the imagination from other thoughts—and at the same time a painful sense of his failure, and proof of the floating doubt and fear which had always been in her mind on his account, wounded and hurt her with almost a physical reality of pain. And what was this suggestion, cast into the midst of this whirlpool of agitated and troubled thought?—“I could tell you; I could make it easy for you to see; I could clear up—” What? oh what, in the name of Heaven! could he mean?

She did not know how long she remained pondering these questions, making a circuitous round through the grounds, under the shadows, until she got back again, gliding noiselessly to the veranda, from which she could dart into the house at any return of her unwelcome suitor. But she still stood there after all had relapsed into the perfect silence of night in such a place. The tourists in the boat had rowed to the beach and disembarked, and disappeared on their way home. The evening breeze dropped altogether and ceased to move the trees, while she still stood against the trellis-work scarcely visible in the gloom, wondering, trying to think, trying to satisfy the questions that arose in her mind, with a vague sense that if she but knew what young Everard meant, there might be in it some guide, some clue to the mystery which weighed upon her soul. But this was not all that Rosalind was to encounter. While she stood thus gazing out from her with eyes that noted nothing, yet could not but see, she was startled by something, a little wandering shadow, not much more substantial than her dreams, which flitted across the scene before her. Her heart leaped up with a pang of terror. What was it? When the idea of the supernatural has once gained admission into the mind the mental perceptions are often disabled in after-emergencies. Her strength abandoned her. She covered her eyes with her hands, with a rush of the blood to her head, a failing of all her powers. Something white as the moonlight flitting across the moonlight, a movement, a break in the stillness of nature. When she looked up again there was nothing to be seen. Was there nothing to be seen? With a sick flutter of her heart, searching the shadows round with keen eyes, she had just made sure that there was nothing on the terrace, when a whiteness among the shrubs drew her eyes farther down. Her nerves, which had played her false for a moment, grew steady again, though her heart beat wildly. There came a faint sound like a footstep, which reassured her a little. In such circumstances sound is salvation. She herself was a sight to have startled any beholder, as timidly, breathlessly, under the impulse of a visionary terror, she came out, herself all white, into the whiteness of the night. She called “Is there any one there?” in a very tremulous voice. No answer came to her question; but she could now see clearly the other moving speck of whiteness, gliding on under the dark trees, emerging from the shadows, on to a little point of vision from which the foliage had been cleared a little farther down. It stood there for a moment, whiteness on whiteness, the very embodiment of a dream. A sudden idea flashed into Rosalind’s mind, relieving her brain, and, without pausing a moment, she hurried down the path, relieved from one fear only to be seized by another. She reached the little ghost as it turned from that platform to continue the descent. The whiteness of the light had stolen the color out of the child’s hair. She was like a little statue in alabaster, her bare feet, her long, half-curled locks, the folds of her nightdress, all softened and rounded in the light. “Amy!” cried Rosalind—but Amy did not notice her sister. Her face had the solemn look of sleep, but her eyes were open. She went on unconscious, going forward to some visionary end of her own from which no outward influence could divert her. Rosalind’s terror was scarcely less great than when she thought it an apparition. She followed, with her heart and her head both throbbing, the unconscious little wanderer. Amy went down through the trees and shrubs to the very edge of the lake, so close that Rosalind behind hovered over her, ready at the next step to seize upon her, her senses coming back, but her mind still confused, in her perplexity not knowing what to do. Then there was for a moment a breathless pause. Amy turned her head from side to side, as if looking for some one; Rosalind seated herself on a stone to wait what should ensue. It was a wonderful scene. The dark trees waved overhead, but the moon, coming down in a flood of silver, lit up all the beach below. It might have been an allegory of a mortal astray, with a guardian angel standing close, watching, yet with no power to save. The water moving softly with its ceaseless ripple, the soft yet chill air of night rustling in the leaves, were the only things that broke the stillness. The two human figures in the midst seemed almost without breath.

Rosalind did not know what to do. In the calm of peaceful life such incidents are rare. She did not know whether she might not injure the child by awaking her. But while she waited, anxious and trembling, Nature solved the question for her. The little wavelets lapping the stones came up with a little rush and sparkle in the light an inch or two farther than before, and bathed Amy’s bare feet. The cold touch broke the spell in a moment. The child started and sprang up with a sudden cry. What might have happened to her had she woke to find herself alone on the beach in the moonlight, Rosalind trembled to think. Her cry rang along all the silent shore, a cry of distracted and bewildering terror: “Oh, mamma! mamma! where are you?” then Amy, turning suddenly round, flew, wild with fear, fortunately into her sister’s arms.

“Rosalind! is it Rosalind? And where is mamma? oh, take me to mamma. She said she would be here.” It was all Rosalind could do to subdue and control the child, who nearly suffocated her, clinging to her throat, urging her on: “I want mamma—take me to mamma!” she cried, resisting her sister’s attempts to lead her up the slope towards the house. Rosalind’s strength was not equal to the struggle. After a while her own longing burst forth. “Oh, if I knew where I could find her!” she said, clasping the struggling child in her arms. Amy was subdued by Rosalind’s tears. The little passion wore itself out. She looked round her, shuddering in the whiteness of the moonlight. “Rosalind! are we all dead, like mamma?” Amy said.