полная версия

Маргарет Олифант
Madam

CHAPTER XIII

The house was in a curious commotion up-stairs. The nursery apartments were at the end of a passage, but on the same level with those of Mrs. Trevanion, in which Jane, Madam’s attendant and anxious maid, was watching—coming out now and then to listen, or standing within the shelter of the half-closed door. Mrs. Trevanion’s room opened into the gallery to which the great staircase led, and from which you could look down into the hall. The nursery was at the end of a long passage, and, when the door was open, commanded also a view of the gallery. There many an evening when there was fine company at Highcourt had the children pressed to see the beautiful ladies coming out in their jewels and finery, dressed for dinner. The spectacle now was not so imposing, but Russell, seated near the door, watched it with concentrated interest. She was waiting too to see what would happen, with excitement indescribable and some terror and sense of guilt. Sometimes Jane would do nothing more than open her mistress’s door, and wait within for any sound or sight that might be possible. Sometimes she would step out with a furtive, noiseless step upon the gallery, and cast a quick look round and below into the hall, then return again noiselessly. Russell watched all these evidences of an anxiety as intense as her own with a sense of relief and encouragement. Jane was as eager as she was, watching over her mistress. Why was she thus watching? If Madam had been blameless, was it likely that any one would be on the alert like this? Russell herself was very sure of her facts. She had collected them with the care which hatred takes to verify its accusations; and yet cold doubts would trouble her, and she was relieved to see her opponent, the devoted adherent of the woman whose well-being was at stake, in a state of so much perturbation and anxiety. It was another proof, more potent than any of the rest. The passage which led to Russell’s domain was badly lighted, and she could not be seen as she sat there at her post like a spy. She watched with an intense passion which concentrated all her thoughts. When she heard the faint little jar of the door she brightened involuntarily. The figure of Jane—slim, dark, noiseless—standing out upon the gallery was comfort to her very soul. The children were playing near. Sophy, perched up at the table, was cutting out pictures from a number of illustrated papers and pasting them into a book, an occupation which absorbed her. The two younger children were on the floor, where they went on with their play, babbling to each other, conscious of nothing else. It had begun to rain, and they were kept indoors perforce. A more peaceful scene could not be. The fire, surrounded by the high nursery fender, burned warmly and brightly. In the background, at a window which looked out upon the park, the nursery-maid—a still figure, like a piece of still life but for the measured movement of her hand—sat sewing. The little ones interchanged their eager little volleys of talk. They were “pretending to be” some of the actors in the bigger drama of life that went on over their heads. But their little performance was only Comedy, and it was Tragedy incarnate, with hands trembling too much to knit the little sock which she held, with dry lips parted with excitement, eyes feverish and shining, and an impassioned sense of power, of panic, and of guilt, that sat close to them in her cap and apron at the open door.

When Rosalind’s figure flitted across the vacant scene, which was like the stage of a theatre to Russell, her first impulse was to start up and secure this visitor from the still more important field of battle below, so as to procure the last intelligence how things were going; and it was with a deepened sense of hostility, despite, and excitement that she now saw her approached by the rival watcher. Jane arrested the young lady on her way to her room, and they had an anxious conversation, during which first one and then both approached the railing of the gallery and looked over. It was all that the woman could do to restrain herself. What were they looking at? What was going on? It is seldom that any ordinary human creature has the consciousness of having set such tremendous forces in motion. It might involve ruin to her mistress, death to her master. The children whom she loved might be orphaned by her hand. But she was not conscious of anything deeper than a latent, and not painful, though exciting, thrill of guilt, and she was very conscious of the exultation of feeling herself an important party in all that was going on. What had she done? Nothing but her duty. She had warned a man who was being deceived; she had exposed a woman who had always kept so fair an appearance, but whom she, more clear-sighted than any one, had suspected from the first. Was she not right in every point, doing her duty to Mr. Trevanion and the house that had sheltered her so long? Was not she indeed the benefactor of the house, preserving it from shame and injury? So she said to herself, justifying her own actions with an excitement which betrayed a doubt; and in the meantime awaiting the result with passionate eagerness, incapable of a thought that did not turn round this centre— What was to happen? Was there an earthquake, a terrible explosion, about to burst forth? The stillness was ominous and dreadful to the watching woman who had put all these powers in motion. She feared yet longed for the first sound of the coming outburst; and yet all the while had a savage exultation in her heart in the thought of having been able to bring the whole world about her to such a crisis of fate.

Jane in the meantime had stopped Rosalind, who was breathless with her run across the park. The woman was much agitated and trembling. “Miss Rosalind,” she said, with pale lips, “is there something wrong? I see Madam in the hall; she is not with master, and he so ill. Oh! what is wrong—what is wrong?”

“I don’t know, Jane; nothing, I hope. Papa is perhaps asleep, and there is some one— Mr. Blake—come to see him. My mother is waiting till he is gone.”

“Oh! that is perhaps why she is there,” said Jane, with relief; then she caught the girl timidly by the arm. “You will forgive me, Miss Rosalind; she has enemies—there are some who would leave nothing undone to harm her.”

“To harm mamma!” said Rosalind, holding her head high; “you forget yourself, Jane. Who would harm her in this house?”

Jane gave the girl a look which was full of gratitude, yet of miserable apprehension. “You will always be true to her, Miss Rosalind,” she said; “and oh, you have reason, for she has been a good mother to you.”

Rosalind looked at the woman somewhat sternly, for she was proud in her way. “If I did not know how fond you are of mamma,” she said, “I should be angry. Does any one ever talk so of mother and daughter? That is all a matter of course; both that she is the best mother in the world, and that I am part of herself.”

Upon this Jane did what an Englishwoman is very slow to do. She got hold of Rosalind’s hand, and made a struggle to kiss it, with tears. “Oh, Miss Rosalind, God bless you! I’d rather hear that than have a fortune left me,” she cried. “And my poor lady will want it all; she will want it all!”

“Don’t be silly, Jane. My mother wants nothing but that we should have a little sense. What can any one do against her, unless it is you and the rest annoying her by foolish anxiety about nothing. Indeed, papa is very ill, and there is reason enough to be anxious,” the girl added, after a pause.

In the meantime Madam Trevanion sat alone in the hall below. She received Blake, when he arrived, as we have seen, and she had a brief conversation with her brother-in-law, which agitated her a little. But when he left her, himself much agitated and not knowing what to think, she sat down again and waited, alone and unoccupied; a thing that scarcely ever in her full life happened to her. She, too, felt the stillness before the tempest. It repeated itself in her mind in a strange, fatal calm, a sort of cessation of all emotion. She had said to John Trevanion that she did not care what came after; and she did not; yet the sense that something was being done which would seriously affect her future life, even though she was not susceptible of much feeling on the subject, made the moment impressive. Calm and strong, indeed, must the nerves be of one who can wait outside the closed door of a room in which her fate is being decided, without a thrill. But a sort of false tranquillity—or was it perhaps the calmest of all moods, the stillness of despair?—came on her as she waited. There is a despair which is passion, and raves; but there is a different kind of despair, not called forth by any great practical danger, but by a sense of the impossibilities of life, the powerlessness of human thought or action, which is very still and says little. The Byronic desperation is very different from that which comes into the heart of a woman when she stands still amid the irreconcilable forces of existence and feels herself helpless amid contending wills, circumstances, powers, which she can neither harmonize nor overcome. The situation in which she stood was impossible. She saw no way out of it. The sharp sting of her present uselessness, and the sense that she had been for the first time turned away from her husband’s bedside, had given a momentary poignancy to her emotions which roused her, but as that died away she sat and looked her position in the face with a calm that was appalling. This was what she had come to at the end of seventeen years—that her position was impossible. She did not know how to turn or what step to take. On either side of her was a mind that did not comprehend and a heart that did not feel for her. She could neither touch nor convince the beings upon whom her very existence depended. Andromeda, waiting for the monster to devour her, had at least the danger approaching but from one quarter, and, on the other, always the possibility of a Perseus in shining armor to cleave the skies. But Madam had on either side of her an insatiable fate, and no help, she thought, on earth or in heaven. For there comes a moment in the experience of all who have felt very deeply, when Heaven, too, seems to fail. Praying long, with no visible reply, drains out the heart. There seems nothing more left to say even to God, no new argument to employ with him, who all the while knows better than he can be told. And there she was, still, silent in her soul as well as with her lips, waiting, with almost a sense of ease in the thought that there was nothing more to be done, not even a prayer to be said, her heart, her thoughts, her wishes, all standing arrested as before an impenetrable wall which stopped all effort. And how still the house was! All the doors closed, the sounds of the household lost in the distance of long passages and shut doors and curtains; nothing to disturb the stillness before the tempest should burst. She was not aware of the anxious looks of her maid, now and then peering over the balustrade of the gallery above, for Jane’s furtive footstep made no sound upon the thick carpet. Through the glass door she saw the clear blue of the sky, radiant in the wintry sunshine, but still, as wintry brightness is, without the flickers of light and shadow. And thus the morning hours went on.

A long time, it seemed a lifetime, passed before her repose was disturbed. It had gradually got to be like an habitual state, and she was startled to be called back from it. The heavy curtain was lifted, and first Mr. Blake, then Dr. Beaton, came forth. The first looked extremely grave and disturbed, as he came out with a case of papers which he had brought with him in his hand. He looked at Mrs. Trevanion with a curious, deprecating air, like that of a man who has injured another unwillingly. They had never been friends, and Madam had shown her sentiments very distinctly as to those overtures of admiration which the young lawyer had taken upon himself to make to Rosalind. The politeness he showed to her on ordinary occasions was the politeness of hostility. But now he looked at her alarmed, as if he could not support her glance, and would fain have avoided the sight of her altogether. Dr. Beaton, on the other hand, came forward briskly.

“I have just been called in to our patient,” he said, “and you are very much wanted, Mrs. Trevanion.”

“Does he want me?” she said.

“I think so—certainly. You are necessary to him; I understand your delicacy in being absent while Mr. Blake—”

“Do not deceive yourself, doctor; it was not my delicacy.”

“Come, please,” said the doctor, almost impatiently; “come at once.”

Blake stood looking after them till both disappeared behind the curtain, then drew a long breath, as if relieved by her departure. “I wonder if she has any suspicion,” he said to himself. Then he made a long pause and walked about the hall, and considered the pictures with the eye of a man who might have to look over the inventory of them for sale. Then he added to himself, “What an old devil!” half aloud. Of whom it was that he uttered this sentiment no one could tell, but it came from the bottom of his heart.

Madam did not leave the sick-chamber again that day. She did not appear at luncheon, for which perhaps the rest were thankful, as she was herself. How to look her in the face, with this mingled doubt of her and respect for her, nobody knew. Rosalind alone was disappointed. The doctor took everything into his own hands. He was now the master of the situation, and ruled everybody. “She is the best woman I ever knew,” he said, with fervor. “I would rather trust her with a case than any Sister in the land. I said to her that I thought she would do better to stay. Mr. Trevanion was very glad to get her back.”

CHAPTER XIV

As so often happens when all is prepared and ready for the catastrophe, the stroke of fate was averted. That night proved better than the last, and then there passed two or three quiet days. It was even possible, the doctor thought, that the alarm might be a false one, and the patient go on, if tranquil and undisturbed, until, in the course of nature, another crisis prepared itself or external commotion accelerated nature. He had received his wife back after her few hours’ banishment with a sort of chuckling satisfaction, and though even his reduced and enfeebled state did not make him incapable of offence, the insulting remarks he addressed to her were no more than his ordinary method. Madam said nothing of them; she seemed, strangely enough, glad to return to her martyrdom. It was better, it appeared, than the sensation of being sent away. She was with him, without rest or intermission, the whole day and a great portion of the night. The two or three hours allowed her for repose were in the middle of the night, and she never stirred abroad nor tasted the fresh air through this period of confinement. The drives which had been her daily refreshment were stopped, along with every other possibility of freedom. In the meantime there appeared something like a fresh development of confidence and dependence upon her, which wrung the heart of the enemy in her stronghold, and made Russell think her work had been all in vain. Mr. Trevanion could not, it was said, bear his wife out of his sight.

It is a mistake when a dying person thus keeps all his world waiting. The sympathetic faculties are worn out. The household in general felt a slight sensation of resentment towards the sick man who had cheated them into so much interest. It was not as if he had been a man whom his dependents loved, and he had defrauded them of that profound and serious interest with which the last steps of any human creature—unless in a hospital or other agglomeration of humanity, where individual characteristics are abolished—are accompanied. The servants, who had with a little awe attended the coming of death, were half disappointed, half disgusted by the delay. Even John Trevanion, who had made up his mind very seriously and somewhat against his own convictions to wait “till all was over,” had a sensation of annoyance: he might go on for weeks, perhaps for months, all the winter—“thank God!” they said, mechanically; but John could not help thinking how inconvenient it would be to come back—to hang on all the winter, never able to go anywhere. It would have been so much more considerate to get it over at once, but Reginald was never one who considered other people’s convenience. Dr. Beaton, who had no desire to leave Highcourt, and who, besides, had a doctor’s satisfaction in a successful fight with disease, took it much more pleasantly. He rubbed his hands and expressed his hopes of “pulling” his patient through, with much unnecessary cordiality. “Let us but stave off all trouble till spring, and there is no saying what may happen,” he said, jauntily. “The summer will be all in his favor, and before next winter we may get him away.” The younger members of the family took this for granted. Reginald, who had been sent for from school, begged his mother another time to be sure there was some real need for it before summoning a fellow home in the middle of the half; and Rosalind entirely recovered her spirits. The cloud that had hung over the house seemed about to melt away. Nobody was aware of the agitating conferences which Jane held with her mistress in the few moments when they saw each other; or the miserable anxiety which contended in Madam’s mind with her evident and necessary duties. She had buried her troubles too long in her own bosom to exhibit them now. And thus the days passed slowly away; the patient had not yet been allowed to leave his bed, and, indeed, was in a state of alarming feebleness, but that was all.

Rosalind was left very much to herself during these days. She had now no longer any one to go out with. Sometimes, indeed, her uncle would propose a walk, but that at the most occupied but a small part of the day, and all her usual occupations had been suspended in the general excitement. She took to wandering about the park, where she could stray alone as much as pleased her, fearing no intrusion. A week or ten days after the visit of Mr. Blake, she was walking near the lake which was the pride of Highcourt. In summer the banks of this piece of water were a mass of flowering shrubs, and on the little artificial island in the middle was a little equally artificial cottage, the creation of Rosalind’s grandmother, where still the children in summer would often go to have tea. One or two boats lay at a little landing-place for the purpose of transporting visitors, and it was one of the pleasures of the neighborhood, when the family were absent, to visit the Bijou, as it was called. At one end of the little lake was a road leading from the village, to which the public of the place had a right. It was perhaps out of weariness with the monotony of her lonely walks that Rosalind directed her steps that way on an afternoon when all was cold and clear, an orange-red sunset preparing in the west, and indications of frost in the air. The lake caught the reflection of the sunset blaze and was all barred with crimson and gold, with the steely blue of its surface coming in around and intensifying every tint. Rosalind walked slowly round the margin of the water, and thought of the happy afternoons when the children and their mother had been rowed across, she herself and Rex taking the control of the boat. The water looked tempting, with its bars of color, and the little red roof of the Bijou blazed in the slanting light. She played with the boats at the landing-place, pushing one into the water with a half fancy to push forth into the lake, until it had got almost too far off to be pulled back again, and gave her some trouble, standing on the edge of the tiny pier with an oar in her hand, to bring it back to its little anchorage. She was standing thus, her figure relieved against the still, shining surface of the water, when she heard a footstep behind her, and thinking it the man who had charge of the cottage and the boats, called to him without turning round, “Come here, Dunmore; I have loosed this boat and I can’t get it back—”

The footstep advanced with a certain hesitation. Then an unfamiliar voice said, “I am not Dunmore—but if you will allow me to help you—”

She started and turned round. It was the same stranger whom she had already twice seen on the road. “Oh! pray don’t let me trouble you. Dunmore will be here directly,” she said.

This did not, however, prevent the young man from rendering the necessary assistance. He got into one of the nearer boats, and stretching out from the bow of it, secured the stray pinnace. It was not a dangerous act, nor even one that gave the passer-by much trouble, but Rosalind, partly out of a sense that she had been ungracious, partly, perhaps—who can tell—out of the utter monotony of all around her, thanked him with eagerness. “I am sorry to give you trouble,” she said again.

“It is no trouble, it is a pleasure.” Was he going to be so sensible, so judicious, as to go away after this? He seemed to intend so. He put on his hat after bowing to her, and turned away, but then there seemed to be an after-thought which struck him. He turned back again, took off his hat again, and said: “I beg your pardon, but may I ask for Mr. Trevanion? The village news is so uncertain.”

“My father is still very ill,” said Rosalind, “but it is thought there is now some hope.”

“That is good news indeed,” the stranger said. Certainly he had a most interesting face. It could not be possible that a man with such a countenance was “not a gentleman,” that most damning of all sentences. His face was refined and delicate; his eyes large, liquid, full of meaning, which was increased by the air of weakness which made them larger and brighter than eyes in ordinary circumstances. And certainly it was kind of him to be glad.

“Oh, yes, you told me before you knew my father,” Rosalind said.

“I cannot claim to know Mr. Trevanion; but I do know a member of the family very well, and I have heard of him all my life.”

Rosalind was no more afraid of a young man than of an old woman, and she thought she had been unjust to this stranger, who, after all, notwithstanding his rough dress, had nothing about him to find fault with. She said, “Yes; perhaps my Uncle John? In any case I am much obliged to you, both for helping me and for your interest in papa.”

“May I sometimes ask how he is? The villagers are so vague.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Rosalind; “they have a bulletin at the lodge, or if you care to come so far as Highcourt, you will always have the last report.”

“You are very kind, I will not come to the house. But I know that you often walk in the park. If I may ask you when we—chance to meet?”

This suggestion startled Rosalind. It awoke in her again that vague alarm—not, perhaps, a gentleman. But when she looked at the eyes which were searching hers with so sensitive a perception of every shade of expression, she became confused and did not know what to think. He was so quickly sensible of every change that he saw he had taken a wrong step. He ought to have gone further, and perceived what the wrong step was, but she thought he was puzzled and did not discover this instinctively, as a gentleman would have done. She withdrew a step or two involuntarily. “Oh, no,” she said with gentle dignity, “I do not always walk the same way; but you may be sure of seeing the bulletin at the lodge.” And with this she made him a courtesy and walked away, not hurrying, to show any alarm, but taking a path which was quite out of the way of the public, and where he could not follow. Rosalind felt a little thrill of agitation in her as she went home. Who could he be, and what did he do here, and why did he throw himself in her way? If she had been a girl of a vulgarly romantic imagination, she would no doubt have jumped at the idea of a secret adoration which had brought him to the poor little village for her sake, for the chance of a passing encounter. But Rosalind was not of this turn of imagination, and that undefined doubt which wavered in her mind did a great deal to damp the wings of any such fancy. What he had said was almost equal to asking her to meet him in the park. She blushed all over at the thought—at the curious impossibility of it, the want of knowledge. It did not seem an insult to her, but such an incomprehensible ignorance in him that she was ashamed of it; that he should have been capable of such a mistake. Not a gentleman! Oh, surely he could never, never— And yet the testimony of those fine, refined features—the mouth so delicate and sensitive, the eyes so eloquent—was of such a different kind. And was it Uncle John he knew? But Uncle John had passed him on the road and had not known him. It was very strange altogether. She could not banish the beautiful, pleading eyes out of her mind. How they looked at her! They were almost a child’s eyes in their uncertainty and wistfulness, reading her face to see how far to go. And altogether he had the air of extreme youth, almost as young as herself, which, of course, in a man is boyhood. For what is a man of twenty? ten years, and more, younger and less experienced than a woman of that sober age. There was a sort of yearning of pity in her heart towards him, just tempered by that doubt. Poor boy! how badly he must have been brought up—how sadly ignorant not to know that a gentleman— And then she began to remember Lord Lytton’s novels, some of which she had read. There would have been nothing out of place in them had such a youth so addressed a lady. He was, indeed, not at all unlike a young man in Lord Lytton. He interested her very much, and filled her mind as she went lightly home. Who could he be, and why so anxious about her father’s health? or was that merely a reason for addressing her—a way, perhaps he thought, of securing her acquaintance, making up some sort of private understanding between them. Had not Rosalind heard somewhere that a boy was opt to select a much older woman as the object of his first admiration? Perhaps that might furnish an explanation for it, for he must be very young, not more than a boy.

When she got home her first step into the house was enough to drive every thought of this description out of her mind. She was aware of the change before she could ask—before she saw even a servant of whom to inquire. The hall, all the rooms, were vacant. She could find nobody, until, coming back after an ineffectual search, she met Jane coming away from the sick-room, carrying various things that had been used there. Jane shook her head in answer to Rosalind’s question. “Oh, very bad again—worse than ever. No one can tell what has brought it on. Another attack, worse than any he has had. I think, Miss Rosalind,” Jane said, drawing close with a tremulous shrill whisper, “it was that dreadful woman that had got in again the moment my poor lady’s back was turned.”

“What dreadful woman?”

“Oh, Russell, Miss Rosalind. My poor lady came out of the room for five minutes— I don’t think it was five minutes. She was faint with fatigue; and all at once we heard a cry. Oh, it was not master, it was that woman. There she was, lying at the room door in hysterics, or whatever you call them. And the spasms came on again directly. I pushed her out of my lady’s way; she may be lying there yet, for anything I know. This time he will never get better, Miss Rosalind,” Jane said.

“Oh, do not say so—do not say so,” the girl cried. He had not been a kind father nor a generous master. But such was the awe of it, and the quivering sympathy of human nature, that even the woman wept as Rosalind threw herself upon her shoulder. The house was full of the atmosphere of death.