Themoon 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 herprotégéto 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 himselfdisagreeable 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 thehills. 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 wouldnot 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 youonly 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 unconsciousrevelation 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 thesequestions, 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 cameout, 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 theleaves, 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.
The penetrating sound of the child’s cry reached the house and far beyond it, disturbing uneasy sleepers all along the edge of the lake. It reached John Trevanion, who was seated by himself, chewing the cud of fancy, bitter rather than sweet, and believing himself the only person astir in the house. There is something in a child’s cry which touches the hardest heart; andhis heart was not hard. It did not occur to him that it could proceed from any of the children of the house, but it was too full of misery and pain to be neglected. He went out, hastily opening the great window, and was, in his terror, almost paralyzed by the sight of the two white figures among the trees, one leaning upon the other. It was only after a momentary hesitation that he hurried towards them, arriving just in time, when Rosalind’s strength was about giving way, and carried Amy into the house. The entire household, disturbed, came from all corners with lights and outcries. But Amy, when she had been warmed and comforted, and laid in Rosalind’s bed, and recovered from her sobbing, had no explanations to give. She had dreamed she was going to mamma, that mamma was waiting for her down on the side of the lake. “Oh, I want mamma, I want mamma!” the child cried, and would not be comforted.
Arthur Rivershad come home on the top of the wave of prosperity; his little war was over, and if it were not he who had gained the day, he yet had a large share of its honors. It was he who had made it known to all the eager critics in England, and given them the opportunity to let loose their opinion. He had kept the supply of news piping hot, one supply ready to be served as soon as the other was despatched, to the great satisfaction of the public and of his “proprietors.” His well-known energy, daring, and alertness, the qualities for which he had been sent out, had never been so largely manifested before. He had thrown himself into the brief but hot campaign with the ardor of a soldier. But there was more in it than this. It was with the ardor of a lover that he had labored—a lover with a great deal to make up to bring him to the level of her he loved. And his zeal had been rewarded. He was coming home, to an important post, with an established place and positionin the world, leaving his life of adventure and wandering behind him. They had their charms, and in their time he had enjoyed them; but what he wanted now was something that it would be possible to ask Rosalind to share. Had he been the commander, as he had only been the historian of the expedition; had he brought back a baronetcy and a name famous in the annals of the time, his task would have been easier. As it was, his reputation—though to its owner very agreeable—was of a kind which many persons scoff at. The soldiers, for whom he had done more than anybody else could do, recommending them to their country as even their blood and wounds would never have recommended them without his help, did not make any return for his good offices, and held him cheap; but, on the other hand, it had procured him his appointment, and made it possible for him to put his question to Rosalind into a practical shape and repeat it to her uncle. He came home with his mind full of this and of excitement and eagerness. He had no time to lose. He was too old for Rosalind as well as not good enough for her, not rich enough, not great enough. Sir Arthur Rivers, K.C.B., the conquering hero—that would have been the right thing. But since he was not that, the only thing he could do was to make the most of what he was. He could give her a pretty house in London, where she would see the best of company; not the gentle dulness of the country, but all the wits, all that was brilliant in society, and have the cream of those amusements and diversions which make life worth living in town. That is always something to offer, if you have neither palaces nor castles, nor a great name, nor a big fortune. Some women would think it better than all these; and he knew that it would be full of pleasures and pleasantness, not dull—a life of variety and brightness and ease. Was it not very possible that these things would tempt her, as they have tempted women more lofty in position than Rosalind? And he did not think her relations would oppose it if she so chose. His family was very obscure; but that has ceased to be of the importance itonce was. He did not believe that John Trevanion would hesitate on account of his family. If only Rosalind should be pleased! It was, perhaps, because he was no longer quite young that he thought of what he had to offer; going over it a thousand times, and wondering if this and that might not have a charm to her as good, perhaps better, than the different things that other people had to offer. He was a man who was supposed to know human nature and to have studied it much, and had he been writing a book he would no doubt have scoffed at the idea of a young girl considering the attractions of different ways of living and comparing what he had to give with what other people possessed. But there was a certain humility in the way in which his mind approached the subject in his own case, not thinking of his own personal merits. He could give her a bright and full and entertaining life. She would never be dull with him. That was better even than rank, he said to himself.
Rivers arrived a few days after the Trevanion party had gone to Bonport. He was profoundly pleased and gratified to find John Trevanion waiting at the station, and to receive his cordial greeting. “My sister will expect to see you very soon,” he said. “They think it is you who are the hero of the war; and, indeed, so you have been, almost as much as Sir Ruby, and with fewer jealousies; and the new post, I hear, is a capital one. I should say you were a lucky fellow, if you had not worked so well for it all.”
“Yes, I hear it is a pleasant post; and to be able to stay at home, and not be sent off to the end of the earth at a moment’s notice—”
“How will you bear it? that is the question,” said John Trevanion. “I should not wonder if in a year you were bored to death.”
Rivers shook his head, with a laugh. “And I hope all are well,” he said; “Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion.”
He did not venture as yet to put the question more plainly.
“We are all well enough,” said John, “though there are always vexations. Oh! nothing of importance, I hope; only some bother about the children and Rosalind. That’s why I removed them; but Rex is coming, and another young fellow, Hamerton—perhaps you recollect him at Clifton. I hope they will cheer us up a little. There is their train coming in. Let us see you soon. Good-night!”
Another young fellow, Hamerton! Then it was not to meet him, Rivers, that Trevanion was waiting. There was no special expectation of him. It was Rex, the schoolboy, and young Hamerton who was to cheer them up—Rex, a sulky young cub, and Hamerton, a thick-headed rustic. John went off quite unconscious of the arrow he had planted in his friend’s heart, and Rivers turned away, with a blank countenance, to his hotel, feeling that he had fallen down—down from the skies into a bottomless abyss. All this while, during so many days of travel, he had been coming towards her; now he seemed to be thrown back from her—back into uncertainty and the unknown. He lingered a little as the train from Paris came in, and heard John Trevanion’s cheerful “Oh, here you are!” and the sound of the other voices. It made his heart burn to think of young Hamerton—the young clodhopper!—going to her presence, while he went gloomily to the hotel. His appearance late for dinner presented a new and welcome enigma to the company who dined at thetable d’hôte. Who was he? Some one fresh from India, no doubt, with that bronzed countenance and hair which had no right to be gray. There was something distinguished about his appearance which everybody remarked, and a little flutter of curiosity to know who he was awoke, especially among the English people, who, but that he seemed so entirely alone, would have taken him for Sir Ruby himself. Rivers took a little comfort from the sense of his own importance and of the sensation made by his appearance. But to arrive here with his mind full of Rosalind, and to find himself sitting alone at a foreigntable d’hôte, with half the places empty and not acreature he knew, chilled him ridiculously—he who met people he knew in every out-of-the-way corner in the earth. And all the time Hamerton at her side—Hamerton, a young nobody! There was no doubt that it was very hard to bear. As soon as dinner was over he went out to smoke his cigar and go over again, more ruefully than ever, his prospects of success. It was a brilliant moonlight night, the trees in the hotel garden standing, with their shadows at their feet, in a blackness as of midnight, while between, every vacant space was full of the intense white radiance. He wandered out and in among them, gloomily thinking how different the night would have been had he been looking down upon the silver lake by the side of Rosalind. No doubt that was what she was doing. Would there be any recollection of him among her thoughts, or of the question he had asked her in the conservatory at the Elms? Would she think he was coming for his answer, and what in all this long interval had she been making up her mind to reply?
He was so absorbed in these thoughts that he took no note of the few people about. These were very few, for though the night was as warm as it was bright, it was yet late in the season, and the rheumatic people thought there was a chill in the air. By degrees even the few figures that had been visible at first dwindled away, and Rivers at last awoke to the consciousness that there was but one left, a lady in black, very slight, very light of foot, for whose coming he was scarcely ever prepared when she appeared, and who shrank into the shadow as he came up, as if to avoid his eye. Something attracted him in this mysterious figure, he could not tell what, a subtile sense of some link of connection between her and himself; some internal and unspoken suggestion which quickened his eyes and interest, but which was too indefinite to be put into words. Who could she be? Where had he seen her? he asked, catching a very brief, momentary glimpse of her face; but he was a man who knew everybody, and it was little wonder if the namesof some of his acquaintances should slip out of his recollection. It afforded him a sort of occupation to watch for her, to calculate when in the round of the garden which she seemed to be making she would come to that bare bit of road, disclosed by the opening in the trees, where the moonlight revealed in a white blaze everything that passed. He was for the moment absorbed in this pursuit—for it was in reality a pursuit, a sort of hunt through his own mind for some thread of association connected with a wandering figure like this—when some one else, a new-comer, came hastily into the garden, and established himself at a table close by. There was no mistaking this stranger—a robust young Englishman still in his travelling dress, whom Rivers recognized with mingled satisfaction and hostility. He was not then spending the evening with Rosalind, this young fellow who was not worthy to be admitted to her presence. That was a satisfaction in its way. He had been received to dinner because he came with the boy, but that was all. Young Hamerton sat down in the full moonlight where no one could make any mistake about him. He recognized Rivers with a stiff little bow. They said to each other, “It is a beautiful night,” and then relapsed respectively into silence. But in the heat of personal feeling thus suddenly evoked, Rivers forgot the mysterious lady for a moment, and saw her no more. After some time the new-comer said to him, with a sort of reluctant abruptness, “They are rather in trouble over there,” making a gesture with his hand to indicate some locality on the other side of the darkly waving trees.
“In trouble—”
“Oh, not of much importance, perhaps. The children—have all been—upset; I don’t understand it quite. There was something that disturbed them—in the hotel here. Perhaps you know—”
“I only arrived this evening,” Rivers said.
The other drew a long breath. Was it of relief? Perhaps he had spoken only to discover whether his rival had beenlong enough in the neighborhood to have secured any advantage. “We brought over the old nurse with us—the woman, you know, who— Oh, I forgot, you don’t know,” Hamerton added, hastily. This was said innocently enough, but it offended the elder suitor, jealous and angry after the unreasonable manner of a lover, that any one, much less this young fellow, whose pretensions were so ridiculous, should have known her and her circumstances before and better than himself.
“I prefer not to know anything that the Trevanions do not wish to be known,” he said sharply. It was not true, for his whole being quivered with eagerness to know everything about them, all that could be told; but at the same time there was in his harsh tones a certain justness of reproach that brought the color to young Hamerton’s face.
“You are quite right,” he said; “it is not my business to say word.”
And then there was silence again. It was growing late. The verandas of the great hotel, a little while ago full of chattering groups, were all vacant; the lights had flitted up-stairs; a few weary waiters lounged about the doors, anxiously waiting till the two Englishmen—so culpably incautious about the night air and the draughts, so brutally indifferent to the fact that Jules and Adolphe and the rest had to get up very early in the morning and longed to be in bed—should come in, and all things be shut up; but neither Hamerton nor Rivers thought of Adolphe and Jules.
Finally, after a long silence, the younger man spoke again. His mind was full of one subject, and he wanted some one to speak to, were it only his rival. “This cannot be a healthy place,” he said; “they are not looking well—they are all—upset. I suppose it is bad for—the nerves—”
“Perhaps there may be other reasons,” said Rivers. His heart stirred within him at the thought that agitation, perhaps of a nature kindred to his own, might be affecting the one person who was uppermost in the thoughts of both—for hedid not doubt that Hamerton, who had saidthem, meant Rosalind. That she might be pale with anticipation, nervous and tremulous in this last moment of suspense! the idea brought a rush of blood to his face, and a warm flood of tender thoughts and delight to his heart.
“I don’t know what other reasons,” said Hamerton. “She thinks— I mean there is nothing thought of but those children. Something has happened to them. The old nurse, the woman— I told you—came over with us to take them in hand. Poor little things? it is not much to be wondered at—” he said, and then stopped short, with the air of a man who might have a great deal to say.
A slight rustling in the branches behind caught Rivers’ attention. All his senses were very keen, and he had the power, of great advantage in his profession, of seeing and hearing without appearing to do so. He turned his eyes, but not his head, in the direction of that faint sound, and saw with great wonder the lady whom he had been watching, an almost imperceptible figure against the opaque background of the high shrubs, standing behind Hamerton. Her head was a little thrust forward in the attitude of listening, and the moon just caught her face. He was too well disciplined to suffer the cry of recognition which came to his lips to escape from them, but in spite of himself expressed his excitement in a slight movement—a start which made the rustic chair on which he was seated quiver, and displaced the gravel under his feet. Hamerton did not so much as notice that he had moved at all, but the lady’s head was drawn back, and the thick foliage behind once more moved as by a breath, and all was still. Rivers was very much absorbed in one pursuit and one idea, which made him selfish; but yet his heart was kind. He conquered his antipathy to the young fellow who was his rival, whom (on that ground) he despised, yet feared, and forced himself to ask a question, to draw him on. “What has happened to the children,” he said; “are they ill?” There was a faint breezein the tree-tops, but none down here in the solid foliage of the great bushes; yet there was a stir in the laurel as of a bird in its nest.
“They are not ill, but yet something has happened. I believe the little things have been seeing ghosts. They sent for this woman, Russell, you know—confound her—”
“Why confound her?”
“Oh, it’s a long story—confound her all the same! There are some women that it is very hard for a man not to wish to knock down. But I suppose they think she’s good for the children. That is all they think of, it appears to me,” Roland said, dejectedly. “The children—always the children—one cannot get in a word. And as for anything else—anything that is natural—”
This moved Rivers on his own account. Sweet hope was high in his heart. It might very well be that this young fellow could not get in a word. Who could tell that the excuse of the children might not be made use of to silence an undesired suitor, to leave the way free for— His soul melted with a delicious softness and sense of secret exultation. “Let us hope their anxiety may not last,” he said, restraining himself, keeping as well as he could the triumph out of his voice. Hamerton looked at him quickly, keenly; he felt that there was exultation—something exasperating—a tone of triumph in it.
“I don’t see why it shouldn’t last,” he said. “Little Amy is like a little ghost herself; but how can it be otherwise in such an unnatural state of affairs—the mother gone, and all the responsibility put upon one—upon one who— For what is Mrs. Lennox?” he cried, half angrily; “oh yes, a good, kind soul—but she has to be taken care of too—and all upon one—upon one who—”
“You mean Miss Trevanion?”
“I don’t mean—to bring in any names. Look here,” cried the young man, “you and I, Rivers—we are not worthy to name her name.”
His voice was a little husky; his heart was in his mouth. He felt a sort of brotherly feeling even for this rival who might perhaps, being clever (he thought), be more successful than he, but who, in the meantime, had more in common with him than any other man, because he too loved Rosalind. Rivers did not make any response. Perhaps he was not young enough to have this feeling for any woman. A man may be very much in love—may be ready even to make any exertion, almost any sacrifice, to win the woman he loves, and yet be unable to echo such a sentiment. He could not allow that he was unworthy to name her name. Hamerton scarcely noticed his silence, and yet was a little relieved not to have any response.
“I am a little upset myself,” he said, “because you know I’ve been mixed up with it all from the beginning, which makes one feel very differently from those that don’t know the story. I couldn’t help just letting out a little. I beg your pardon for taking up your time with what perhaps doesn’t interest you.”
This stung the other man to the quick. “It interests me more, perhaps, than you could understand,” he cried. “But,” he added, after a pause, “it remains to be seen whether the family wish me to know—not certainly at second-hand.”
Hamerton sprang to his feet in hot revulsion of feeling. “If you mean me by the second-hand,” he said; then paused, ashamed both of the good impulse and the less good which had made him thus betray himself. “I beg your pardon,” he added; “I’ve been travelling all day, and I suppose I’m tired and apt to talk nonsense. Good-night.”
Jules and Adolphe were glad. They showed the young Englishman to his room with joy, making no doubt that the other would follow. But the other did not follow. He sat for a time silently, with his head on his hand. Then he rose, and walking to the other side of the great bouquet of laurels, paused in the profound shadow, where there stood, as hedivined rather than saw, a human creature in mysterious anguish, anxiety, and pain. He made out with difficulty a tall shadow against the gloomy background of the close branches. “I do not know who you are,” he said; “I do not ask to know; but you are deeply interested in what that—that young fellow was saying?”
The voice that replied to him was very low. “Oh, more than interested; it is like life and death to me. For God’s sake, tell me if you know anything more.”
“I know nothing to-night—but to-morrow— You are the lady whom I met in Spain two years ago, whose portrait stands on Rosalind Trevanion’s writing-table.”
There was a low cry; “Oh! God bless you for telling me! God bless you for telling me!” and the sound of a suppressed sob.
“I shall see her to-morrow,” he said. “I have come thousands of miles to see her. It is possible that I might be of use to you. May I tell her that you are here?”
The stir among the branches seemed to take a different character as he spoke, and the lady came out towards the partial light. She said firmly, “No; I thank you for your kind intentions;” then paused. “You will think it strange that I came behind you and listened. You will think it was not honorable. But I heard their name, and Roland Hamerton knows me. When a woman is in great trouble she is driven to strange expedients. Sir,” she cried, after another agitated pause, “I neither know your name nor who you are, but if you will bring me news to-morrow after you have seen them—if you will tell me—it will be a good deed—it will be a Christian deed.”
“Say something more to me than that,” he cried, with a passion that surprised himself; “say that you will wish me well.”
She moved along softly, noiselessly, with her head turned to him, moving towards the moonlight, which was like the blaze of day, within a few steps from where they had been standing.The impression which had been upon his mind of a fugitive—a woman abandoned and forlorn—died out so completely that he felt ashamed ever to have ventured upon such a thought. And he felt, with a sudden sense of imperfection quite unfamiliar to him, that he was being examined and judged. He felt, too, with an acute self-consciousness, that the silver in his hair shone in the white light, and that the counterbalancing qualities of fine outline and manly color must be wanting in that wan and colorless illumination. He could not see her face, except as an abstract paleness, turned towards him, over-shadowed by the veil which she had put back, but which still threw a deep shade; but she gazed into his, which he could not but turn towards her in the full light of the moon. The end of the examination was not very consolatory to his pride. She sighed and turned away. “The man whom she chooses will want no other blessing,” she said.
A few minutes after Jules and Adolphe were happy, shutting up the doors, putting out the lights, betaking themselves to the holes and corners under the stairs, under the roofs, in which these sufferers for the good of humanity slept.
Theincident of that evening had a very disturbing effect upon the family at Bonport. Little Amy, waking next morning much astonished to find herself in Rosalind’s room, and very faintly remembering what had happened, was subjected at once to questionings more earnest than judicious—questionings which brought everything to her mind, with a renewal of all the agitation of the night. But the child had nothing to say beyond what she had said before—that she had dreamed of mamma, that mamma had called her to come down to the lake, and be taken home; that she wanted to go home, to go to mamma—oh, to go to mamma! but Rosalind said she wasdead, and Sophy said they were never, never to see her again. Then Amy flung herself upon her sister’s breast, and implored to be taken to her mother. “You don’t know how wicked I was, Rosalind. Russell used to say things till I stopped loving mamma—oh, I did, and did not mind when she went away! But now! where is she, where is she? Oh, Rosalind! oh, Rosalind! will she never come back? Oh, do you think she is angry, or that she does not care for me any more? Oh, Rosalind, is she dead, and will she never come back?” This cry seemed to come from Amy’s very soul. She could not be stilled. She lay in Rosalind’s bed, as white as the hangings about her, not much more than a pair of dark eyes looking out with eagerness unspeakable. And Rosalind, who had gone through so many vicissitudes of feeling—who had stood by the mother who was not her mother with so much loyalty, yet had yielded to the progress of events, and had not known, in the ignorance of her youth, what to do or say, or how to stand against it— Rosalind was seized all at once by a vehement determination and an intolerable sense that the present position of affairs was impossible, and could not last.
“Oh, my darling!” she cried; “get well and strong, and you and I will go and look for her, and never, never be taken from her again!”
“But, Rosalind, if mamma is dead?” cried little Amy.
The elder people who witnessed this scene stole out of the room, unable to bear it any longer.
“It must be put a stop to,” John Trevanion said, in a voice that was sharp with pain.
“Oh, who can put a stop to it?” cried Mrs. Lennox, weeping, and recovering herself and weeping again. “I should not have wondered, not at all, if it had happened at first; but, after these years! And I that thought children were heartless little things, and that they had forgot!”
“Can Russell do nothing, now you have got her here?” he cried with impatience, walking up and down the room. Hewas at his wits’ end, and in his perplexity felt himself incapable even of thought.
“Oh, John, did you not hear what that little thing said? She put the children against their mother. Amy will not let Russell come near her. If I have made a mistake, I meant it for the best. Russell is as miserable as any of us. Johnny has forgotten her, and Amy cannot endure the sight of her. And now it appears that coming to Bonport, which was your idea, is a failure too, though I am sure we both did it for the best.”
“That is all that could be said for us if we were a couple of well-intentioned fools,” he cried. “And, indeed, we seem to have acted like fools in all that concerns the children,” he added, with a sort of bitterness. For what right had fate to lay such a burden upon him—him who had scrupulously preserved himself, or been preserved by Providence, from any such business of his own?
“John,” said Mrs. Lennox, drying her eyes, “I don’t think there is so much to blame yourself about. You felt sure it would be better for them being here; and when you put it to me, so did I. You never thought of the lake. Why should you think of the lake? We never let them go near it without somebody to take care of them in the day, and how could any one suppose that at night—”
Upon this her brother seized his hat and hurried from the house. The small aggravation seemed to fill up his cup so that he could bear no more, with this addition, that Mrs. Lennox’s soft purr of a voice roused mere exasperation in him, while his every thought of the children, even when the cares they brought threatened to overwhelm him, was tender with natural affection. But, in fact, wherever he turned at this moment he saw not a gleam of light, and there was a bitterness as of the deferred and unforeseen in this sudden gathering together of clouds and dangers which filled him almost with awe. The catastrophe itself had passed over much more quietly than could have beenthought. But, lo, here, when no fear was, the misery came. His heart melted within him when he thought of Amy’s little pale face and that forlorn expedition in the stillness of the night to the side of the lake which betrayed, as nothing else could have done, the feverish working of her brain and the disturbance of her entire being. What madness of rage and jealousy must that have been that induced a man to leave this legacy of misery behind him to work in the minds of his little children years after he was dead! and what appalling cruelty and tyranny it was which made it possible for a dead man, upon whom neither argument nor proof could be brought to bear, thus to blight by a word so many lives! All had passed with a strange simplicity at first, and with such swift and silent carrying-out of the terrible conditions of the will that there had been no time to think if any expedient were possible. Looking back upon it, it seemed to him incredible that anything so extraordinary should have taken place with so little disturbance.Shehad accepted her fate without a word, and every one else had accepted it. The bitterness of death seemed to have passed, except for the romance of devotion on Rosalind’s part, which he believed had faded in the other kind of romance more natural at her age. No one but himself had appeared to remember at all this catastrophe which rent life asunder. But now, when no one expected it, out of the clear sky came the explosions of the storm. He had decided too quickly that all was over. The peace had been but a pretence, and now the whole matter would have to be re-opened again.
The cause of the sudden return of all minds to the great family disaster and misery seemed to him more than ever confused by this last event. The condition which had led to Amy’s last adventure seemed to make it more possible, notwithstanding Sophy’s supposed discovery, that the story of the apparition was an illusion throughout. The child, always a visionary child, must have had, in the unnatural and strained condition of her nerves and long repression of her feelings, a dream so vivid as,like that of last night, to take the aspect of reality; and Rosalind, full of sympathy, and with all her own keen recollections ready to be called forth at a touch, must have received the contagion from her little sister, and seen what Amy had so long imagined she saw. Perhaps, even, it was the same contagion, acting on a matter-of-fact temperament, which had induced Sophy to believe that she, too, had seen her mother, but in real flesh and blood. Of all the hypotheses that could be thought of this seemed to him the most impossible. He had examined all the hotel registers, and made anxious inquiries everywhere, without finding a trace of Mrs. Trevanion. She had not, so far as he was aware, renounced her own name. And, even had she done so, it was impossible that she could have been in the hotel without some one seeing her, without leaving some trace behind. Notwithstanding this certainty, John Trevanion, even while he repeated his conviction to himself, was making his way once more to the hotel to see whether, by any possibility, some light might still be thrown upon a subject which had become so urgent. Yet even that, though it was the first thing that presented itself to him, had become, in fact, a secondary matter. The real question in this, as in all difficulties, was what to do next. What could be done to unravel the fatal tangle? Now that he contemplated the matter from afar, it became to him all at once a thing intolerable—a thing that must no longer be allowed to exist. What was publicity, what was scandal, in comparison with this wreck of life? There must be means, he declared to himself, of setting an unrighteous will aside, whatever lawyers might say. His own passiveness seemed incredible to him, as well as the extraordinary composure with which everybody else had acquiesced, accepting the victim’s sacrifice. But that was over. Even though the present agitation should pass away, he vowed to himself that it should not pass from him until he had done all that man could do to set the wrong right.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he waswalking into Aix with the speed of a man who has urgent work before him, though that work was nothing more definite or practical than the examination over again of the hotel books to see if there he could find any clew. He turned them over and over in his abstraction, going back without knowing it to distant dates, and roaming over an endless succession of names which conveyed no idea to his mind. He came at last, on the last page, to the name of Arthur Rivers, with a dull sort of surprise. “To be sure, Rivers is here!” he said to himself aloud.
“Yes, to be sure I am here. I have been waiting to see if you would find me out,” Rivers said behind him. John did not give him so cordial a welcome as he had done on the previous night.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I have so much on my mind I forget everything. Were you coming out to see my sister? We can walk together. The sun is warm, but not too hot for walking. That’s an advantage of this time of the year.”
“It is perhaps too early for Mrs. Lennox,” Rivers said.
“Oh, no, not too early. The truth is we are in a little confusion. One of the children has been giving us a great deal of anxiety.”
“Then, perhaps,” said Rivers, with desperate politeness, “it will be better for me not to go.” He felt within himself, though he was so civil, a sort of brutal indifference to their insignificant distresses, which were nothing in comparison with his own. To come so far in order to eat his breakfast under the dusty trees, and dine at the table d’hôte in a half-empty hotel at Aix, seemed to him so great an injustice and scorn in the midst of his fame and importance that even the discovery he had made, though it could not but tell in the situation, passed from his mind in the heat of offended consequence and pride.
John Trevanion, for his part, noticed the feeling of the other as little as Rivers did his. “One of the children has beenwalking in her sleep,” he said. “I don’t want to get a fool of a doctor who thinks of nothing but rheumatism. One of them filled my good sister’s mind with folly about suppressed gout. Poor little Amy! She has a most susceptible brain, and I am afraid something has upset it. Do you believe in ghosts, Rivers?”
“As much as everybody does,” said Rivers, recovering himself a little.
“That is about all that any one can say. This child thinks she has seen one. She is a silent little thing. She has gone on suffering and never said a word, and the consequence is, her little head has got all wrong.”
By this time Rivers, having cooled down, began to see the importance of the disclosure he had to make. He said, “Would you mind telling me what the apparition was? You will understand, Trevanion, that I don’t want to pry into your family concerns, and that I would not ask without a reason.”
John Trevanion looked at him intently with a startled curiosity and earnestness. “I can’t suppose,” he said, “when it comes to that, much as we have paid for concealment, that you have not heard something—”
“Miss Trevanion told me,” said Rivers—he paused a moment, feeling that it was a cruel wrong to him that he should be compelled to say Miss Trevanion—he who ought to have been called to her side at once, who should have been in a position to claim her before the world as his Rosalind—“Miss Trevanion gave me to understand that the lady whom I had met in Spain, whose portrait was on her table, was—”
“My sister-in-law—the mother of the children—yes, yes—and what then?” John Trevanion cried.
“Only this, Trevanion—that lady is here.”
John caught him by the arm so fiercely, so suddenly, that the leisurely waiters standing about, and the few hotel guests who were moving out and in in the quiet of the morning stopped and stared with ideas of rushing to the rescue. “Whatdo you mean?” he said. “Here? How do you know? It is impossible.”
“Come out into the garden, where we can talk. It may be impossible, but it is true. I also saw her last night.”
“You must be mad or dreaming, Rivers. You too—a man in your senses—and— God in heaven!” he said, with a sudden bitter sense of his own unappreciated friendship—unappreciated even, it would seem, beyond the grave—“that she should have come, whatever she had to say, to you—to any one—and not to me!”
“Trevanion, you are mistaken. This is no apparition. There was no choice, of me or any one. That poor lady, whether sinned against or sinning I have no knowledge, is here. Do you understand me? She is here.”
They were standing by this time in the shadow of the great laurel bushes where she had sheltered on the previous night. John Trevanion said nothing for a moment. He cast himself down on one of the seats to recover his breath. It was just where Hamerton had been sitting. Rivers almost expected to see the faint stir in the bushes, the evidence of some one listening, to whom the words spoken might, as she said, be death or life.
“This is extraordinary news,” said Trevanion at last. “You will pardon me if I was quite overwhelmed by it. Rivers, you can’t think how important it is. Where can I find her? You need not fear to betray her—oh, Heaven, to betray her to me, her brother! But you need not fear. She knows that there is no one who has more—more regard, more respect, or more— Let me know where to find her, my good fellow, for Heaven’s sake!”
“Trevanion, it is not any doubt of you. But, in the first place, I don’t know where to find her, and then—she did not disclose herself to me. I found her out by accident. Have I any right to dispose of her secret? I will tell you everything I know,” he added hastily, in answer to the look and gesture, almost of despair, which John could not restrain. “Last nightyour friend, young Hamerton, was talking—injudiciously, I think”—there was a little sweetness to him in saying this, even in the midst of real sympathy and interest—“he was talking of what was going on in your house. I had already seen some one walking about the garden whose appearance I seemed to recollect. When Hamerton mentioned your name” (he was anxious that this should be made fully evident), “she heard it; and by and by I perceived that some one was listening, behind you, just there, in the laurels.”
John started up and turned round, gazing at the motionless, glistening screen of leaves, as if she might still be there. After a moment—“And what then?”
“Not much more. I spoke to her afterwards. She asked me, for the love of God, to bring her news, and I promised—what I could—for to-night.”
John Trevanion held out his hand, and gave that of Rivers a strong pressure. “Come out with me to Bonport. You must hear everything, and perhaps you can advise me. I am determined to put an end to the situation somehow, whatever it may cost,” he said.
Thetwo men went out to Bonport together, and on the way John Trevanion, half revolted that he should have to tell it, half relieved to talk of it to another man, and see how the matter appeared to a person unconcerned, with eyes clear from prepossession of any kind, either hostile or tender, gave his companion all the particulars of his painful story. It was a relief; and Rivers, who had been trained for the bar, gave it at once as his opinion that the competent authorities would not hesitate to set such a will aside, or at least, on proof that no moral danger would arise to the children, would modify its restrictions greatly. “Wills are sacred theoretically; but there has always beena power ofrevision,” he said. And he suggested practicalmeans of bringing this point to a trial—or at least to the preliminary trial of counsel’s advice, which gave his companion great solace. “I can see that we all acted like fools,” John Trevanion confessed, with a momentary over-confidence that his troubles might be approaching an end. “We were terrified for the scandal, the public discussion, that would have been sure to rise—and no one so much as she. Old Blake was all for the sanctity of the will, as you say, and I—I was so torn in two with doubts and—miseries—”
“But I presume,” Rivers said, “these have all been put to rest. There has been a satisfactory explanation—”
“Explanation!” cried John. “Do you think I could ask, or she condescend to give, what you call explanations? She knew her own honor and purity; and she knew,” he added with a long-drawn breath, “that I knew them as well as she—”
“Still,” said Rivers, “explanations are necessary when it is brought before the public.”
“It shall never be brought before the public!”
“My dear Trevanion! How then are you to do anything, how set the will aside?”
This question silenced John; and it took further speech out of the mouth of his companion, who felt, on his side, that if he were about to be connected with the Trevanion family, it would not be at all desirable, on any consideration, that this story should become public. He had been full of interest in the woman whose appearance had struck him before he knew anything about her, and who had figured so largely in his first acquaintance with Rosalind. But when it became a question of a great scandal occupying every mind and tongue, and in which it was possible his own wife might be concerned—that was a very different matter. In a great family such things are treated with greater case. If it is true that an infringement on their honor, a blot on the scutcheon, is supposed to be of more importance where there is a noble scutcheon to tarnish, it is yet true that a great family history would lose much of its interestif it were not crossed now and then by a shadow of darkness, a tale to make the hearers shudder; and that those who are accustomed to feel themselves always objects of interest to the world bear the shame of an occasional disclosure far better than those sprung from a lowlier level whose life is sacred to themselves, and who guard their secrets far more jealously than either the great or the very small. Rivers, in the depth of his nature, which was not that of a born patrician, trembled at the thought of public interference in the affairs of a family with which he should be connected. All the more that it would be an honor and elevation to him to be connected with it, he trembled to have its secrets published. It was not till after he had given his advice on the subject that this drawback occurred to him. He was not a bad man, to doom another to suffer that his own surroundings might go free; but when he thought of it he resolved that, if he could bring it about, Rosalind’s enthusiasm should be calmed down, and she should learn to feel for her stepmother only that calm affection which stepmothers at the best are worthy of, and which means separation rather than unity of interests. He pondered this during the latter part of the way with great abstraction of thought. He was very willing to take advantage of his knowledge of Mrs. Trevanion, and of the importance it gave him to be their only means of communication with her; but further than this he did not mean to go. Were Rosalind once his, there should certainly be no room in his house for a stepmother of blemished fame.
And there were many things in his visit to Bonport which were highly unsatisfactory to Rivers. John Trevanion was so entirely wrapped in his own cares as to be very inconsiderate of his friend, whose real object in presenting himself at Aix at all he must no doubt have divined had he been in possession of his full intelligence. He took the impatient lover into the grounds of the house where Rosalind was, and expected him to take an interest in the winding walks by which little Amy hadstrayed down to the lake, and all the scenery of that foolish little episode. “If her sister had not followed her, what might have happened? The child might have been drowned, or, worse still, might have gone mad in the shock of finding herself out there all alone. It makes one shudder to think of it.” Rivers did not shudder; he was not very much interested about Amy. But his nerves were all jarred by the contrariety of the circumstances as he looked up through the shade of the trees to the house at the top of the little eminence, where Rosalind was, but as much out of his reach as if she had been at the end of the world. He did not see her until much later, when he returned at John Trevanion’s invitation to dinner. Rosalind was very pale, but blushed when she met him with a consciousness which he scarcely knew how to interpret. Was there hope in the blush, or was it embarrassment—almost pain? She said scarcely anything during dinner, sitting in the shadow of the pinkabat-jour, and of her aunt Sophy, who, glad of a new listener, poured forth her soul upon the subject of sleep-walking, and told a hundred stories, experiences of her own and of other people, all tending to prove that it was the most usual thing in the world, and that, indeed, most children walked in their sleep. “The thing to do is to be very careful not to wake them,” Mrs. Lennox said. “That was Rosalind’s mistake. Oh, my dear, there is no need to tell me that you didn’t mean anything that wasn’t for the best. Nobody who has ever seen how devoted you are to these children—just like a mother—could suppose that; but I understand,” said Aunt Sophy with an air of great wisdom, “that you should never wake them. Follow, to see that they come to no harm, and sometimes you may be able to guide them back to their own room—which is always the best thing to do—but never wake them; that is the one thing you must always avoid.”
“I should think Rivers has had about enough of Amy’s somnambulism by this time,” John said. “Tell us something about yourself. Are you going to stay long? Are you onyour way northwards? All kinds of honor and glory await you at home, we know.”
“My movements are quite vague. I have settled nothing,” Rivers replied. And how could he help but look at Rosalind, who, though she never lifted her eyes, and could not have seen his look, yet changed color in some incomprehensible way? And how could he see that she changed color in the pink gloom of the shade, which obscured everything, especially such a change as that? But he did see it, and Rosalind was aware he did so. Notwithstanding his real interest in the matter, it was hard for him to respond to John Trevanion’s questions about the meeting planned for this evening. It had been arranged between them that John should accompany Rivers back to the hotel, that he should be at hand should the mysterious lady consent to see him; and the thought of this possible interview was to him as absorbing as was the question of Rosalind’s looks to his companion. But they had not much to say to each other, each being full of his own thoughts as they sat together for those few minutes after dinner which were inevitable. Then they followed each other gloomily into the drawing-room, which was vacant, though a sound of voices from outside the open window betrayed where the ladies had gone. Mrs. Lennox came indoors as they approached. “It is a little cold,” she said, with a shiver. But Rivers found it balm as he stepped out and saw Rosalind leaning upon the veranda among the late roses, with the moonlight making a sort of silvery gauze of her light dress. He came out and placed himself by her; but the window stood open behind, with John Trevanion within hearing, and Mrs. Lennox’s voice running on quite audibly close at hand. Was it always to be so? He drew very near to her, and said in a low voice, “May I not speak to you?” Rosalind looked at him with eyes which were full of a beseeching earnestness. She did not pretend to be ignorant of what he meant. The moonlight gave an additional depth of pathetic meaning to her face, out of which it stole all the color.
“Oh, Mr. Rivers, not now!” she said, with an appeal which he could not resist. Poor Rivers turned and left her in the excitement of the moment. He went along the terrace to the farther side with a poor pretence of looking at the landscape, in reality to think out the situation. What could he say to recommend himself, to put himself in the foreground of her thoughts? A sudden suggestion flashed upon him, and he snatched at it without further consideration. When he returned to where he had left her, Rosalind was still there, apparently waiting. She advanced towards him shyly, with a sense of having given him pain. “I am going in now to Amy,” she said; “I waited to bid you good-night.”
“One word,” he said. “Oh, nothing about myself, Miss Trevanion. I will wait, if I must not speak. But I have a message for you.”
“A message—for me!” She came a little nearer to him, with that strange divination which accompanies great mental excitement, feeling instinctively that what he was about to say must bear upon the subject of her thoughts.
“You remember,” he said, “the lady whom I told you I had met? I have met her again, Miss Trevanion.”
“Where?” She turned upon him with a cry, imperative and passionate.
“Miss Trevanion, I have never forgotten the look you gave me when I said that the lady was accompanied by a man. I want to explain; I have found out who it was.”
“Mr. Rivers!”
“Should I be likely to tell you anything unfit for your ears to hear? I know better now. The poor lady is not happy, in that any more than in any other particular of her lot. The man was her son.”
“Her son!” Rosalind’s cry was such that it made Mrs. Lennox stop in her talk; and John Trevanion, from the depths of the dark room behind, came forward to know what it was.
“I felt that I must tell you; you reproached me with your eyes when I said— But, if I wronged her, I must make reparation. It was in all innocence and honor; it was her son.”
“Mr. Rivers!” cried Rosalind, turning upon him, her breast heaving, her lips quivering, “this shows it is a mistake. I might have known all the time it was a mistake. She had no son except— It was not the same. Thank you for wishing to set me right; but it could not be the same. It is no one we know. It is a mistake.”
“But when I tell you, Miss Trevanion, that she said—”
“No, no, you must not say any more. We know nothing; it is a mistake.” Disappointment, with, at the same time, a strange, poignant smart, as of some chance arrow striking her in the dark, which wounded her without reason, without aim, filled her mind. She turned quickly, eluding the hand which Rivers had stretched out, not pausing even for her uncle, and hastened away without a word. John Trevanion turned upon Rivers, who came in slowly from the veranda with a changed and wondering look. “What have you been saying to Rosalind? You seem to have frightened her,” he said.
“Oh, it seems all a mistake,” he replied vaguely. He was, in fact, greatly cast down by the sudden check he had received. In the height of his consciousness that his own position as holding a clew to the whereabouts of this mysterious woman was immeasurably advantaged, there came upon him this chill of doubt lest perhaps after all— But then she had herself declared that to hear of the Trevanions was to her as life and death. Rivers did not know how to reconcile Rosalind’s instant change of tone, her evident certainty that his information did not concern her, with the impassioned interest of the woman whom he half felt that he had betrayed. How he had acquired the information which he had thought it would be a good thing for him thus to convey he could scarcely have told. It had been partly divination, partly some echo of recollection; but he felt certain that he was right; and he hadalso felt certain that to hear it would please Rosalind. He was altogether cast down by her reception of his news. He did not recover himself during all the long walk back to Aix in the moonlight, which he made in company with John Trevanion. But John was absorbed in the excitement of the expected meeting, and did not disturb him by much talking. They walked along between the straight lines of the trees, through black depths of shadow and the white glory of the light, exchanging few words, each wrapped in his own atmosphere. When the lights of the town were close to them John spoke. “Whether she will speak to me or not, you must place me where I can see her, Rivers. I must make sure.”
“I will do the best I can,” said Rivers; “but what if it should all turn out to be a mistake?”
“How can it be a mistake? Who else would listen as you say she did? Who else could take so much interest? But I must make sure. Place me, at least, where I may see her, even if I must not speak.”
The garden was nearly deserted, only one or two solitary figures in shawls and overcoats still lingering in the beauty of the moonlight. Rivers placed John standing in the shadow of a piece of shrubbery, close to the open space which she had crossed as she made her round of the little promenade, and he himself took the seat under the laurels which he had occupied on the previous night. He thought there was no doubt that she would come to him, that after the hotel people had disappeared she would be on the watch, and hasten to hear what he had to tell her. When time passed on and no one appeared, he got up again and began himself to walk round and round, pausing now and then to whisper to John Trevanion that he did not understand it—that he could not imagine what could be the cause of the delay. They waited thus till midnight, till the unfortunate waiters on the veranda were nearly distracted, and every intimation of the late hour which these unhappy men could venture to give had been given. When twelvestruck, tingling through the blue air, John Trevanion came, finally, out of his hiding-place, and Rivers from his chair. They spoke in whispers, as conspirators instinctively do, though there was nobody to hear. “I cannot understand it,” said Rivers, with the disconcerted air of a man whose exhibition has failed. “I don’t think it is of any use waiting longer,” said John. “Oh, of no use. I am very sorry, Trevanion. I confidently expected—” “Something,” said John, “must have happened to detain her. I am disappointed, but still I do not cease to hope; and if, in the meantime, you see her, or any trace of her—” “You may be sure I will do my best,” Rivers said, ashamed, though it was no fault of his, and, notwithstanding Rosalind’s refusal to believe, with all his faith in his own conclusions restored.
They shook hands silently, and John Trevanion went away downcast and disappointed. When he had gone down the narrow street and emerged into the Place, which lay full in the moonlight, he saw two tall, dark shadows in the very centre of the white vacancy and brightness in the deserted square. They caught his attention for the moment, and he remembered after that a vague question crossed his mind what two women could be doing out so late. Were they sisters of charity, returning from some labor of love? Thus he passed them quickly, yet with a passing wonder, touched, he could not tell how, by something forlorn in the two solitary women, returning he knew not from what errand. Had he but known who these wayfarers were!