Маргарет Олифант
Madam
CHAPTER IX
Next day, as they drove out in the usual afternoon hour while Mr. Trevanion took his nap after luncheon, a little incident happened which was nothing, yet gave Rosalind, who was alone with her stepmother in the carriage, a curious sensation. A little way out of the village, on the side of the road, she suddenly perceived a man standing, apparently waiting till they should pass. Madam had been very silent ever since they left home, so much more silent than it was her habit to be that Rosalind feared she had done something to incur Mrs. Trevanion’s displeasure. Instead of the animated conversations they used to have, and the close consultations that were habitual between them, they sat by each other silent, scarcely exchanging a word in a mile. Rosalind was not herself a great talker, but when she was with this other and better self, she flowed forth in lively observation and remark, which was not talk, but the involuntary natural utterance which came as easily as her breath. This day, however, she had very little to say, and Madam nothing. They leaned back, each in her corner, with a blank between them, which Rosalind now and then tried to break with a wistful question as to whether mamma was cold, whether she did not find the air too keen, if she would like the carriage closed, etc., receiving a smile and a brief reply, but no more. They had fallen into silence almost absolute as they passed through the village, and it was when they emerged once more into the still country road that the incident which has been referred to took place. Some time before they came up to him, Rosalind remarked the man standing under one of the hedgerow trees, close against it, looking towards them, as if waiting for the carriage to pass. Though she was not eager for the tales of the village like Sophy, Rosalind had a country girl’s easily roused curiosity in respect to a stranger. She knew at once by the outline of him, before she could make out even what class he belonged to, that this was some one she had never seen before. As the carriage approached rapidly she grew more and more certain. He was a young man, a gentleman—at least his dress and attitude were like those of a gentleman; he was slim and straight, not like the country louts. As he turned his head towards the carriage, Rosalind thought she had never seen a more remarkable face. He was very pale; his features were large and fine, and his pallor and thinness were made more conspicuous by a pair of very large, dreamy, uncertain dark eyes. These eyes were looking so intently towards the carriage that Rosalind had almost made up her mind that there was to be some demand upon their sympathy, some petition or appeal. She could not help being stirred with all the impetuosity of her nature, frank and warm-hearted and generous, towards this poor gentleman. He looked as if he had been ill, as if he meant to throw himself upon their bounty, as if— The horses sped on with easy speed as she sat up in the carriage and prepared herself for whatever might happen. It is needless to say that nothing happened as far as the bystander was concerned. He looked intently at them, but did no more. Rosalind was so absorbed in a newly awakened interest that she thought of nothing else, till suddenly, turning round to her companion, she met—not her stepmother’s sympathetic countenance, but the blackness of a veil in which Mrs. Trevanion had suddenly enveloped herself. “That must surely be the gentleman Sophy was talking of,” she said. Madam gave a slight shiver in her furs. “It is very cold,” she said; “it has grown much colder since we came out.”
“Shall I tell Robert to close the carriage, mother?”
“Oh, no, it is unnecessary. You can tell him to go home by the Wildwood gate. I should not have come out if I had known it was so cold.”
“I hope you have not taken cold, mamma. To me the air seems quite soft. I suppose,” Rosalind said, in that occasional obtuseness which belongs to innocence, “you did not notice, as you put down your veil just then, that gentleman on the road? I think he must be the gentleman Sophy talked about—very pale, with large eyes. I think he must have been ill. I feel quite interested in him too.”
“No, I did not observe—”
“I wish you had noticed him, mamma. I should know him again anywhere; it is quite a remarkable face. What can he want in the village? I think you should make the doctor call, or send papa’s card. If he should be ill—”
“Rosalind, you know how much I dislike village gossip. A stranger in the inn can be nothing to us. There is Dr. Smith if he wants anything,” said Madam, hurriedly, almost under her breath. And she shivered again, and drew her furred mantle more closely round her. Though it was November, the air was soft and scarcely cold at all, Rosalind thought in her young hardiness; but then Mrs. Trevanion, shut up so much in an overheated room, naturally was more sensitive to cold.
This was in the afternoon; and on the same evening there occurred the incident of the bramble, and all the misery that followed, concluding in Mr. Trevanion’s attack, and the sudden gloom and terror thrown upon the house. Rosalind had no recollection of so trifling a matter in the excitement and trouble that followed. She saw her stepmother again only in the gray of the winter morning, when waking suddenly, with that sense of some one watching her which penetrates the profoundest sleep, she found Mrs. Trevanion seated by her bedside, extremely pale, with dark lines under her eyes, and the air of exhaustion which is given by a sleepless night.
“I came to tell you, dear, that your father, at last, is getting a little sleep,” she said.
“Oh, mamma— But you have had no sleep—you have been up all night!”
“That does not much matter. I came to say also, Rosalind, that I fear my being so late last night and his impatience had a great deal to do with bringing on the attack. It might be almost considered my fault.”
“Oh, mamma! we all know,” cried Rosalind, inexpressibly touched by the air with which she spoke, “how much you have had to bear.”
“No more than what was my duty. A woman when she marries accepts all the results. She may not know what there will be to bear, but whatever it is it is all involved in the engagement. She has no right to shrink—”
There was a gravity, almost solemnity, in Madam’s voice and look which awed the girl. She seemed to be making a sort of formal and serious explanation. Rosalind had seen her give way under her husband’s cruelty and exactions. She had seen her throw herself upon the bed and weep, though there had never been a complaint in words to blame the father to the child. This was one point in which, and in which alone, the fact that Rosalind was his daughter, and not hers, had been apparent. Now there was no accusation, but something like a statement, formal and solemn, which was explained by the exhaustion and calm as of despair that was in her face.
“That has been my feeling all through,” she said. “I wish you to understand it, Rosalind. If Reginald were at home—well, he is a boy, and I could not explain to him as I can to you. I want you to understand me; I have had more to bear, a great deal more, than I expected. But I have always said to myself it was in the day’s work. You may perhaps be tempted to think, looking back, that I have had, even though he has been so dependent upon me, an irritating influence. Sometimes I have myself thought so, and that some one else— But if you will put one thing to another,” she added, going on in the passionless, melancholy argument, “you will perceive that the advantage to him of my knowledge of all his ways counter-balances any harm that might arise from that; and then there is always the doubt whether any one else would not have been equally irritating after a time.”
“Mother,” cried Rosalind, who had raised herself in her bed and was gazing anxiously into the pale and worn-out face which was turned half away from her, not looking at her; “mother! why do you say all this to me? Do I want you to explain yourself, I who know that you have been the best, the kindest—”
Mrs. Trevanion did not look at her, but put up her hand to stop this interruption.
“I am saying this because I think your father is very ill, Rosalind.”
“Worse, mamma?”
“I have myself thought that he was growing much weaker. We flattered ourselves, you know, that to be so long without an attack was a great gain; but I have felt he was growing weaker, and I see now that Dr. Beaton agrees with me. And to have been the means of bringing on this seizure when he was so little able to bear it—”
“Oh, mamma! how can you suppose that any one would ever blame—”
“I am my own judge, Rosalind. No, you would not blame me, not now at least, when you are entirely under my influence. I think, however, that had it not been this it would have been something else. Any trifling matter would have been enough. Nothing that we could have done would have staved it off much longer. That is my conviction. I have worked out the question, oh, a hundred times within myself. Would it be better to go away, and acknowledge that I could not— I was doing as much harm as good—”
Rosalind here seized upon Mrs. Trevanion’s arm, clasping it with her hands, with a cry of “Go away! leave us, mother!” in absolute astonishment and dismay.
“And so withdraw the irritation. But then with the irritation I should have deprived him of a great deal of help. And there was always the certainty that no other could do so much, and that any other would soon become an irritation too. I have argued the whole thing out again and again. And I think I am right, Rosalind. No one else could have been at his disposal night and day like his wife. And if no one but his wife could have annoyed him so much, the one must be taken with the other.”
“You frighten me, mamma; is it so very serious? And you have done nothing—nothing?”
Here Mrs. Trevanion for the first time turned and looked into Rosalind’s face.
“Yes,” she said. There was a faint smile upon her lips, so faint that it deepened rather than lightened the gravity of her look. She shook her head and looked tenderly at Rosalind with this smile. “Ah, my dear,” she said, “you would willingly make the best of it; but I have done something. Not, indeed, what he thinks, what perhaps other people think, but something I ought not to have done.” A deep sigh followed, a long breath drawn from the inmost recesses of her breast to relieve some pain or pressure there. “Something,” she continued, “that I cannot help, that, alas! I don’t want to do; although I think it is my duty, too.”
And then she was silent, sitting absorbed in her own thoughts by Rosalind’s bed. The chilly winter morning had come in fully as she talked till now the room was full of cold daylight, ungenial, unkindly, with no pleasure in it. Rosalind in her eager youth, impatient of trouble, and feeling that something must be done or said to make an end of all misery, that it was not possible there could be no remedy, held her mother’s hand between hers, and cried and kissed it and asked a hundred questions. But Madam sat scarcely moving, her mind absorbed in a labyrinth from which she saw no way of escape. There seemed no remedy either for the ills that were apparent or those which nobody knew.
“You ought at least to be resting,” the girl said at last; “you ought to get a little sleep. I will get up and go to his room and bring you word if he stirs.”
“He will not stir for some time. No, I am not going to bed. After I have bathed my face Jane will get me a cup of tea, and I shall go down again. No, I could not sleep. I am better within call, so that if he wants me— But I could not resist the temptation of coming in to speak to you, Rosalind. I don’t know why—just an impulse. We ought not to do things by impulse, you know, but alas! some of us always do. You will remember, however, if necessary. Somehow,” she said, with a pathetic smile, her lips quivering as she turned to the girl’s eager embrace, “you seem more my own child, Rosalind, more my champion, my defender, than those who are more mine.”
“Nothing can be more yours, mother, all the more that we chose each other. We were not merely compelled to be mother and child.”
“Perhaps there is something in that,” said Mrs. Trevanion.
“And the others are so young; only I of all your children am old enough to understand you,” cried Rosalind, throwing herself into her stepmother’s arms. They held each other for a moment closely in that embrace which is above words, which is the supreme expression of human emotion and sympathy, resorted to when all words fail, and yet which explains nothing, which leaves the one as far as ever from understanding the other, from divining what is behind the veil of individuality which separates husband from wife and mother from child. Then Mrs. Trevanion rose and put Rosalind softly back upon her pillow and covered her up with maternal care as if she had been a child. “I must not have you catch cold,” she said, with a smile which was her usual motherly smile with no deeper meaning in it. “Now go to sleep, my love, for another hour.”
In her own room Madam exchanged a few words with Jane, who had also been up all night, and who was waiting for her with the tea which is a tired watcher’s solace. “You must do all for me to-day, Jane,” she said; “I cannot leave Mr. Trevanion; I will not, which is more. I have been, alas! partly the means of bringing on this attack.”
“Oh, Madam, how many attacks have there been before without any cause!”
“That is a little consolation to me; still, it is my fault. Tell him how unsafe it is to be here, how curious the village people are, and that I implore him, for my sake, if he thinks anything of that, and for God’s sake, to go away. What can we do more? Tell him what we have both told him a hundred times, Jane!”
“I will do what I can, Madam; but he pays no attention to me, as you know.”
“Nor to any one,” said Madam, with a sigh. “I have thought sometimes of telling Dr. Beaton everything; he is a kind man, he would know how to forgive. But, alas! how could I tell if it would do good or harm?”
“Harm! only harm! He would never endure it,” the other said.
Again Mrs. Trevanion sighed; how deep, deep down was the oppression which those long breaths attempted to relieve. “Oh,” she said, “how happy they are that never stray beyond the limits of nature! Would not poverty, hard work, any privation, have been better for all of us?”
“Sixteen years ago, Madam,” Jane said.
CHAPTER X
Mr. Trevanion’s attack wore off by degrees, and by and by he resumed his old habits, appearing once more at dinner, talking as of old after that meal, coming into the drawing-room for his rubber afterwards. Everything returned into the usual routine. But there were a few divergences from the former habits of the house. The invalid was never visible except in the evening, and there was a gradual increase of precaution, a gradual limitation of what he was permitted or attempted to do, which denoted advancing weakness. John Trevanion remained, which was another sign. He had made all his arrangements to go, and then after a conversation with the doctor departed from them suddenly, and announced that if it did not interfere with any of Madam’s arrangements he would stay till Christmas, none of his engagements being pressing. Other guests came rarely, and only when the invalid burst forth into a plaint that he never saw any one, that the sight of the same faces day by day was enough to kill a man. “And every one longer than the other,” he cried. “There is John like a death’s head, and the doctor like a grinning waxwork, and Madam—why, she is the worst of all. Since I interfered with her little amusements, going out in the dark like one of her own housemaids, by Jove, Madam has been like a whipped child. She that had always an argument ready, she has taken up the submissive rôle at last. It’s a new development. Eh? don’t you think so? Did you ever see Madam in the rôle of Griselda before? I never did, I can tell you. It is a change! It won’t last long, you think, John? Well, let us get the good of it while we can. It is something quite novel to me.”
“I said nothing on the subject,” said John, “and indeed I think it would be better taste to avoid personal observations.”
“Especially in the presence of the person, eh? That’s not my way. I say the worst I have to say to your face, so you need not fear what is said behind your back— Madam knows it. She is so honest; she likes honesty. A woman that has set herself to thwart and cross her husband for how many—sixteen years, she can’t be in much doubt as to his opinion of her, eh? What! will nothing make you speak?”
“It is time for this tonic, Reginald. Dr. Beaton is very anxious that you should not neglect it.”
“Is that all you have got to say? That is brilliant, certainly; quinine, when I want a little amusement. Bitter things are better than sweet, I suppose you think. In that case I should be a robust fox-hunter instead of an invalid, as I am—for I have had little else all my life.”
“I think you have done pretty well in your life, Reginald. What you have wanted you have got. That does not happen to all of us. Except health, which is a great deduction, of course.”
“What I have wanted! I wanted an heir and a family like other men, and I got a poor little wife who died at nineteen, and a useless slip of a girl. Then my second venture—perhaps you think my second venture was very successful—a fine robust wife, and a mischievous brat like Rex, always in scrapes at school, besides that little spiteful minx Sophy, who would spite her own mother if she could, and the two imps in the nursery. What good are they to me? The boy will succeed me, of course, and keep you out. I had quite as lief you had it, John. You are my own brother, after all, and that boy is more his mother’s than mine. He has those eyes of hers. Lord! what a fool a young fellow is! To imagine I should have given up so much when I ought to have known better, and taken so many burdens on my shoulders for the sake of a pair of fine eyes. They are fine eyes still, but I know the meaning of them now.”
“This is simply brutal, Reginald,” said his brother, in high indignation. He got up to go away, but a sign from Mrs. Trevanion, behind her husband’s back, made him pause.
“Brutal, is it? which means true. Give me some of that eau-de-Cologne. Can’t you be quick about it? You take half an hour to cross the room. I’ve always meant to tell you about that second marriage of mine. I was a fool, and she was— Shall I tell him all about it, Madam? when we met, and how you led me on. By Jove! I have a great mind to publish the whole business, and let everybody know who you are and what you are—or, rather, were when I married you.”
“I wish you would do so, Reginald. The mystery has never been my doing. It would be for my happiness if you would tell John.”
The sick man looked round upon her with a chuckling malice. “She would like to expose herself in order to punish me,” he said. “But I sha’n’t do it; you may dismiss that from your mind. I don’t wish the country to know that my wife was—” Then he ended with a laugh which was so insulting that John Trevanion involuntarily clinched his fist and made a step forward; then recollected himself, and fell back with a suppressed exclamation.
“It is quite natural you should take her part, Jack. She’s a fine woman still of her years, though a good bit older than you would think. How old were you, Madam, when I married you? Oh, old enough for a great deal to have happened—eight-and-twenty or thereabouts—just on the edge of being passée then, the more fool I! Jove! what a fool I was, thrusting my head into the bag. I don’t excuse myself. I posed myself in those days as a fellow that had seen life, and wasn’t to be taken in. But you were too many for me. Never trust to a woman, John, especially a woman that has a history and that sort of thing. You are never up to their tricks. However knowing you may be, take my word for it, they know a thing or two more than you.”
“If you mean to do nothing but insult your wife, Reginald—”
“John, for Heaven’s sake! What does it matter? You will think no worse of me for what he says, and no better. Let him talk!” cried Madam, under her breath.
“What is she saying to you—that I am getting weak in my mind and don’t know what I am saying? Ah! that’s clever. I have always expected something of the sort. Look here, Madam! sit down at once and write to Charley Blake, do you hear? Charley—not the old fellow. Ask him to come here from Saturday to Monday, I want to have a talk with him. You are not fond of Charley Blake. And tell him to bring all his tools with him. He will know”—with a significant laugh—“what I mean.”
She went to the writing-table without a word, and wrote the note. “Will you look at it, Reginald, to see if it is what you wish.”
The patient snarled at her with his laugh. “I can trust you,” he said, “and you shall see when Blake comes.”
“What do you want with Blake, Reginald? Why should you trouble yourself with business in your present state of health? You must have done all that is necessary long ago, I wish you would keep quiet and give yourself a chance.”
“A chance! that’s Beaton’s opinion, I suppose—that I have more than a chance. That’s why you all gather round me like a set of crows, ready to pounce upon the carcass. And Madam, Madam here, can scarcely hold herself in, thinking how soon she will be free.” He pushed back his chair, and gazed from one to another with fiery eyes which seemed ready to burst from their sockets. “A chance! that’s all I’ve got, is it? You needn’t wait for it, John; there’s not a penny for you.”
“Reginald, what the doctor says is that you must be calm, that nothing must be done to bring on those spasms that shake you so. Never mind what John says; he does not know.”
“Oh, you!” cried the sick man; “you—you’ve motive enough. It’s freedom to you. I don’t tell you to scheme for it, I know that’s past praying for. Nobody can doubt it’s worth your while—a good settlement, and freedom to dance on my grave as soon as you like, as soon as you have got me into it. But John has got no motive,” he said again, with a sort of garrulous pathos; “he’ll gain nothing. He’ll rather lose something perhaps, for he couldn’t have the run of the house if it were yours, as he has done all his life. Yours!” the sick man added, with concentrated wrath and scorn; “it shall never be yours; I shall see to that. Where is the note to Charley—Charley Blake? John, take charge of it for me; see that it’s put in the post. She has the bag in her hands, and how can I tell whether she will let it go? She was a great deal too ready to write it, eh? don’t you think, knowing it was against herself?”
After this cheerful morning’s talk, which was the ordinary kind of conversation that went on in Mr. Trevanion’s room, from which John Trevanion could escape and did very shortly, but Madam could not and did not, the heavy day went on, little varied. Mrs. Trevanion appeared at lunch with a sufficiently tranquil countenance, and entered into the ordinary talk of a family party with a composure or philosophy which was a daily miracle to the rest. She checked little Sophy’s impertinences and attended to the small pair of young ones like a mother embarrassed with no cares less ignoble. There was an air of great gravity about her, but not more than the critical condition of her husband’s health made natural. And the vicar, who came in to lunch to ask after the squire, saw nothing in Madam’s manner that was not most natural and seemly. He told his wife afterwards that she took it beautifully; “Very serious, you know, very anxious, but resigned and calm.” Mrs. Vicar was of opinion that were she Mrs. Trevanion she would be more than resigned, for everybody knew that Madam had “a great deal to put up with.” But from her own aspect no one could have told the continual flood of insult to which she was exposed, the secret anxiety that was gnawing at her heart. In the evening, before dinner, she met her brother-in-law by accident before the great fireplace in the hall. She was sitting there, thrown down in one of the deep chairs, like a worn-out creature. It was rare to see her there, though it was the common resort of the household, and so much, in spite of himself, had John Trevanion been moved by the sense of mystery about, and by his brother’s vituperations, that his first glance was one of suspicion. But his approach took her by surprise. Her face was hidden in her hands, and there was an air of abandon in her attitude and figure as if she had thrown herself, like a wounded animal, before the fire. She uncovered her face, and, he thought, furtively, hastily dried her eyes as she turned to see who was coming. Pity was strong in his heart, notwithstanding his suspicion, he came forward and looked down upon her kindly. “I am very glad,” he said, “to see that you are able to get a moment to yourself.”
“Yes,” she said, “Reginald seems more comfortable to-night.”
“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “it is beyond human patience. You ought not to have all this to bear.”
“Oh, nothing is beyond human patience,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a smile. “Never mind, I can bear it very well. After all, there is no novelty in it to wound me. I have been bearing the same sort of thing for many years.”
“And you have borne it without a murmur. You are a very wonderful woman, or—”
“What do you mean? Do you think me a bad one? It would not be wonderful after all you have heard. But I am not a bad woman, John. I am not without blame; who is? But I am not what he says. This is mere weakness to defend myself; but when one has been beaten down all day long by one perpetual flood like a hailstorm— What was that? I thought I heard Reginald’s voice.”
“It was nothing; some of the servants. I am very sorry for you, Grace. If anything can be done to ease you—”
“Nothing can be done. I think talking does him good; and what is the use of a man’s wife if not to hear everything he has to say? It diverts the evil from others, and I hope from himself too. Yes, I do think so; it is an unpleasant way of working it out, and yet I think, like the modes they adopt in surgery sometimes, it relieves the system. So let him talk,” she went on with a sigh. “It will be hard, though, if I am to lose the support of your good opinion, John.”
To this he made no direct answer, but asked, hurriedly, “What do you suppose he wants with Charley Blake? Charley specially, not his father, whom I have more faith in?”
“Something about his will, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not anything of consequence. He tries to scare me, threatening something—but it is not for that that I am afraid.”
“We shall be able to do you justice in that point. Of what are you afraid?”
She rose with a sudden impulse and stood by him in the firelight, almost as tall as he, and with a certain force of indignation in her which gave her an air of command and almost grandeur beside the man who suspected and hesitated. “Nothing!” she said, as if she flung all apprehension from her. John, whose heart had been turned from her, felt himself melting against his will. She repeated after a time, more gently, “I know that if passion can suggest anything it will be done. And he will not have time to reconsider, to let his better nature—” (here she paused, and in spite of herself a faint smile, in which there was some bitterness, passed over her face) “his better nature speak,” she said, slowly; “therefore I am prepared for everything and fear nothing.”
“This sounds not like courage, but despair.”
“And so it is. Is it wonderful that it should be despair rather than courage after all these years? I am sure there is something wrong. Listen; don’t you hear it? That is certainly Reginald’s voice.”
“No, no, you are excited. What could it be? He wants something, perhaps, and he always calls loudly for whatever he wants. It is seldom I can see you for a moment. I want to tell you that I will see Blake and find out from him—”
“I must go to Reginald, John.”
She was interrupted before she had crossed the hall by the sudden appearance of Russell, who pushed through the curtain which hung over the passage leading to Mr. Trevanion’s room, muffling herself in it in her awkwardness. The woman was scared and trembling. “Where’s Madam, Madam?” she said. “She’s wanted; oh, she’s wanted badly! He’s got a fit again.”
Mrs. Trevanion flew past the trembling woman like a shadow. “It is your doing,” she said, with a voice that rung into Russell’s heart. The intruder was entirely unhinged. “I never saw him in one before. It’s dreadful; oh, it’s dreadful! Doctor! doctor! oh, where’s the doctor?” she cried, losing all command of herself, and shrieking forth the name in a way which startled the house. The servants came running from all sides; the children, terror-stricken, half by the cry, half by the sound of Russell’s voice, so familiar to them, appeared, a succession of little wistful faces, upon the stair, while the doctor himself pushed through, startled, but with all his wits about him. “How has it happened? You’ve been carrying your ill-tempered chatter to him. I’ll have you tried for manslaughter,” the doctor said.
