Twodays after this, while as yet there had appeared no further solution of the mystery, Roland Hamerton came hastily one morning up the sloping paths of Bonport into the garden, where he knew he should find Rosalind. He was in the position of a sort of outdoor member of the household, going andcoming at his pleasure, made no account of, enjoying the privileges of a son and brother rather than of a lover. But the advantages of this position were great. He saw Rosalind at all hours, in all circumstances, and he was himself so much concerned about little Amy, and so full of earnest interest in everything that affected the family, that he was admitted even to the most intimate consultations. To Rosalind his presence had given a support and help which she could not have imagined possible; especially in contrast with Rivers, who approached her with that almost threatening demand for a final explanation, and shaped every word and action so as to show that the reason for his presence here was her and her only. Roland’s self-control and unfeigned desire to promote her comfort first of all, before he thought of himself, was in perfect contrast to this, and consolatory beyond measure. She had got to be afraid of Rivers; she was not at all afraid of the humble lover who was at the same time her old friend, who was young like herself, who knew everything that had happened. This was the state to which she had come in that famous competition between the three, who ought, as Mr. Ruskin says, to have been seven. One she had withdrawn altogether from, putting him out of the lists with mingled repulsion and pity. Another she had been seized with a terror of, as of a man lying in wait to devour her. The third—he was no one; he was only Roland; her lover in the nursery, her faithful attendant all her life. She was not afraid of him, nor of any exaction on his part. Her heart turned to him with a simple reliance. He was not clever, he was not distinguished; he had executed for her none of the labors either of Hercules or any other hero. He had on his side no attractions of natural beauty, or any of those vague appeals to the imagination which had given Everard a certain power over her; and he had not carried her image with him, as Rivers had done, through danger and conflict, or brought back any laurels to lay at her feet. If it had been a matter of competition, as in the days of chivalry,or in the scheme of our gentle yet vehement philosopher, Roland would have had little chance. But after the year was over in which Rosalind had known of the competition for her favor, he it was who remained nearest. She glanced up with an alarmed look to see who was coming, and her face cleared when she saw it was Roland. He would force no considerations upon her, ask no tremendous questions. She gave him a smile as he approached. She was seated under the trees, with the lake gleaming behind for a background through an opening in the foliage. Mrs. Lennox’s chair still stood on the same spot, but she was not there. There were some books on the table, but Rosalind was not reading. She had some needlework in her hands, but that was little more than a pretence; she was thinking, and all her thoughts were directed to one subject. She smiled when he came up, yet grudged to lose the freedom of those endless thoughts. “I thought,” she said, “you were on the water with Rex.”
“No, I told you I wanted something to do. I think I have got what I wanted, but I should like to tell you about it, Rosalind.”
“Yes?” she said, looking up again with a smiling interrogation. She thought it was about some piece of exercise or amusement, some long walk he was going to take, some expedition which he wanted to organize.
“I have heard something very strange,” he said. “It appears that I said something the other night to Rivers, whom I found when I went back to the hotel, and that somebody, some lady, was seen to come near and listen. I was not saying any harm, you may suppose, but only that the children were upset. And this lady came around to hear what I was saying.”
His meaning did not easily reach Rosalind, who was preoccupied, and did not connect Roland at all with the mystery around her. She said, “That was strange; who could it be; some one who knew us in the hotel?”
“Rosalind, I have never liked to say anything to you about—Madam.”
“Don’t!” she said, holding up her hand; “oh, don’t, Roland. The only time you spoke to me about her you hurt me—oh, to the very heart; not that I believed it; but it was so grievous that you could think, that you could say—that you could see even, anything—”
“I have thought it over a hundred times since then, and what you say is true, Rosalind. One has no right even to see things that—there are some people who are above even— I know now what you mean, and that it is true. You knew her better than any one else, and your faith is mine. That is why I came to tell you. Rosalind—who could that woman be but one? She came behind the bushes to hear what I was saying. She was all trembling—who else could that be?”
“Roland!” Rosalind had risen up, every tinge of color ebbing from her face; “you too!—you too—!”
“No,” he said, rising also, taking her hand; “not that, not that, Rosalind. If she were dead, as you think, would she not know everything? She would not need to listen to me. This is what I am sure of, that she is here and trying every way—”
She grasped his hands as if her own were iron, and then let them go, and threw herself into her seat, and sobbed, unable to speak, “Oh, Roland! oh, Roland!” with a cry that went to his heart.
“Rosalind,” he said, leaning over her, touching her shoulder, and her hair, with a sympathy which filled his eyes with tears, and would not be contented with words, “listen; I am going to look for her now. I sha’n’t tire of it, whoever tires. I shall find her, Rosalind. And then, if she will let me take care of her, stand by her, bring her news of you all—! I have wronged her more than anybody, for I thought that I believed; see if I don’t make up for it now. I could not go without telling you— I shall find her, Rosalind,” the young man cried.
She rose up again, trembling, and uncovered her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her eyes almost wild with hope and excitement. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I had madeup my mind before. I will bear it no longer. Let them take everything; what does it matter? I am not only my father’s daughter, I am myself first of all. If she is living, Roland—”
“She is living, I am sure.”
“Then as soon as we find her—oh no, she would go away from me; when you find her Roland— I put all my trust in you.”
“And then,” he cried breathlessly, “and then? No, I’ll make no bargains; only say you trust me, dear. You did say you trusted me, Rosalind.”
“With all my heart,” she said.
And as Rosalind looked at him, smiling with her eyes full of tears, the young man turned and hurried away. When he was nearly out of sight he looked back and waved his hand: she was standing up gazing after him as if—as if it were the man whom she loved was leaving her. That was the thought that leaped up into his heart with an emotion indescribable—the feeling of one who has found what he had thought lost and beyond his reach. As if it were the man she loved! Could one say more than that? “But I’ll make no bargains, I’ll make no bargains,” he said to himself. “It’s best to be all for love and nothing for reward.”
While this scene was being enacted in the garden, another, of a very different description, yet bearing on the same subject, was taking place in the room which John Trevanion, with the instinct of an Englishman, called his study. The expedient of sending for Russell had not been very successful so far as the nursery was concerned. The woman had arrived in high elation and triumph, feeling that her “family” had found it impossible to go on any longer without her, and full of the best intentions, this preliminary being fully acknowledged. She had meant to make short work with Johnny’s visions and the dreams of Amy, and to show triumphantly that she, and she only, understood the children. But when she arrived at Bonport her reception was not what she had hoped. The face ofaffairs was changed. Johnny, who saw no more apparitions, no longer wanted any special care, and Russell found the other woman in possession, and indisposed to accept her dictation, or yield the place to her, while Amy, now transferred to Rosalind’s room and care, shrank from her almost with horror. All this had been bitter to her, a disappointment all the greater that her hopes had been so high. She found herself a supernumerary, not wanted by any one in the house, where she had expected to be regarded as a deliverer. The only consolation she received was from Sophy, who had greatly dropped out of observation during recent events, and was as much astonished and as indignant to find Amy the first object in the household, and herself left out, as Russell was in her humiliation. The two injured ones found great solace in each other in these circumstances. Sophy threw herself with enthusiasm into the work of consoling, yet embittering, her old attendant’s life. Sophy told her all that had been said in the house before her arrival, and described the distaste of everybody for her with much graphic force. She gave Russell also an account of all that had passed, of the discovery which she believed she herself had made, and further, though this of itself sent the blood coursing through Russell’s veins, of the other incidents of the family life, and of Rosalind’s lovers; Mr. Rivers, who had just come from the war, and Mr. Everard, who was the gentleman who had been at the Red Lion. “Do you think he was in love with Rosalind then, Russell?” Sophy said, her keen eyes dancing with curiosity and eagerness. Russell said many things that were very injudicious, every word of which Sophy laid up in her heart, and felt with fierce satisfaction that her coming was not to be for nothing, and that the hand of Providence had brought her to clear up this imbroglio. She saw young Everard next day, and convinced herself of his identity, and indignation and horror blazed up within her. Russell scarcely slept all night, and as she lay awake gathered together all the subjects of wrath she had, and piled them high. Next morningshe knocked at John Trevanion’s door, with a determination to make both her grievances and her discovery known at once.
“Mr. Trevanion,” said Russell, “may I speak a word with you, sir, if you please?”
John Trevanion turned around upon his chair, and looked at her with surprise, and an uncomfortable sense of something painful to come. What had he to do with the women-servants? That, at least, was out of his department. “What do you want?” he asked in a helpless tone.
“Mr. John,” said Russell, drawing nearer, “there is something that I must say. I can’t say it to Mrs. Lennox, for she’s turned against me like the rest. But a gentleman is more unpartial like. Do you know, sir, who it is that is coming here every day, and after Miss Rosalind, as they tell me? After Miss Rosalind! It’s not a thing I like to say of a young lady, and one that I’ve brought up, which makes it a deal worse; but she has no proper pride. Mr. John, do you know who that Mr. Everard, as they call him, is?”
“Yes, I know who he is. You had better attend to the affairs of the nursery, Russell.”
This touched into a higher blaze the fire of Russell’s wrath. “The nursery! I’m not allowed in it. There is another woman there that thinks she has the right to my place. I’m put in a room to do needlework, Mr. John. Me! and Miss Amy in Miss Rosalind’s room, that doesn’t know no more than you do how to manage her. But I mustn’t give way,” the woman cried, with an effort. “Do you know as the police are after him, Mr. John? Do you know it was all along of him as Madam went away?”
John Trevanion sprang from his chair. “Be silent, woman!” he cried; “how dare you speak so to me?”
“I’ve said it before, and I will again!” cried Russell—“a man not half her age. Oh, it was a shame!—and out of a house like Highcourt—and a lady that should know better, not a poorservant like them that are sent out of the way at a moment’s notice when they go wrong. Don’t lift your hand to me, Mr. John. Would you strike a woman, sir, and call yourself a gentleman? And you that brought me here against my will when I was happy at home. I won’t go out of the room till I have said my say.”
“No,” said John, with a laugh which was half rage, though the idea that he was likely to strike Russell was a ludicrous exasperation. “No, as you are a woman I can’t, unfortunately, knock you down, whatever impertinence you may say.”
“I am glad of that, sir,” said Russell, “for you looked very like it; and I’ve served the Trevanions for years, though I don’t get much credit for it, and I shouldn’t like to have to say as the lady of the house forgot herself for a boy, and a gentleman of the house struck a woman. I’ve too much regard for them to do that.”
Here she paused to take breath, and then resumed, standing in an attitude of defence against the door, whither John’s threatening aspect had driven her: “You mark my words, sir,” cried Russell, “where that young man is, Madam’s not far off. Miss Sophy, that has her wits about her, she has seen her—and the others that is full of fancies they’ve seen what they think is a ghost; and little Miss Amy, she is wrong in the head with it. This is how I find things when I’m telegraphed for, and brought out to a strange place, and then told as I’m not wanted. But it’s Providence as wants me here. Mrs. Lennox—she always was soft— I don’t wonder at her being deceived; and, besides, she wasn’t on the spot, and she don’t know. But, Mr. Trevanion, you were there all the time. You know what goings-on there were. It wasn’t the doctor or the parson Madam went out to meet, and who was there besides? Nobody but this young man. When a woman’s bent on going wrong, she’ll find out the way. You’re going to strike me again! but it’s true. It was him she met every night, every night, out in the cold. And then he saw Miss Rosalind, andhe thought to himself—here’s a young one, and a rich one, and far nicer than that old— Mr. John! I know more than any of you know, and I’ll put up with no violence, Mr. John!”
John Trevanion’s words will scarcely bear repeating. He put her out of the room with more energy than perhaps he ought to have employed with a woman; and he bade her go to the devil with her infernal lies. Profane speech is not to be excused, but there are times when it becomes mere historical truth and not profanity at all. They were infernal lies, the language and suggestion of hell even if—even if—oh, that a bleeding heart should have to remember this!—even if they were true. John shut the door of his room upon the struggling woman and came back to face himself, who was more terrible still. Even if they were true! They brought back in a moment a suggestion which had died away in his mind, but which never had been definitely cast forth. His impulse when he had seen this young Everard had been to take him by the collar and pitch him forth, and refuse him permission even to breathe the same air: “Dangerous fellow, hence; breathe not where princes are!” but then a sense of confusion and uncertainty had come in and baffled him. There was no proof, either, that Everard was the man, or that there was any man. It was not Madam’s handwriting, but her husband’s, that had connected the youth with Highcourt; and though he might have a thousand faults, he did not look the cold-blooded villain who would make his connection with one woman a standing ground upon which to establish schemes against another. John Trevanion’s brow grew quite crimson as the thought went through his mind. He was alone, and he was middle-aged and experienced in the world; and two years ago many a troublous doubt, and something even like a horrible certainty, had passed through his mind. But there are people with whom it is impossible to associate shame. Even if shame should be all but proved against them, it will not hold. When he thought an evil thought of Madam—nay, when that thoughthad but a thoroughfare through his mind against his will, the man felt his cheek redden and his soul faint. And here, too, were the storm-clouds of that catastrophe which was past, rolling up again, full of flame and wrath. They had all been silent then, awestricken, anxious to hush up and pass over, and let the mystery remain. But now this was no longer possible. A bewildering sense of confusion, of a darkness through which he could not make his way, of strange coincidences, strange contradictions, was in John Trevanion’s mind. He was afraid to enter upon this maze, not knowing to what conclusion it might lead him. And yet now it must be done.
Only a very short time after another knock came to his door, and Rosalind entered, with an atmosphere about her of urgency and excitement. She said, without any preface:
“Uncle John, I have come to tell you what I have made up my mind to do. Do you remember that in two days I shall be of age, and my own mistress? In two days!”
“My dear,” he said, “I hope you have not been under so hard a taskmaster as to make you impatient to be free.”
“Yes,” said Rosalind. “Oh, not a hard taskmaster; but life has been hard, Uncle John! As soon as I am my own mistress I am going, Amy and I, to—you know. I cannot rest here any longer. Amy will be safe; she can have my money. But this cannot go on any longer. If we should starve, we must find my mother. I know you will say she is not my mother. And who else, then? She is all the mother I have ever known. And I have left her these two years under a stain which she ought not to bear, and in misery which she ought not to bear. Was it ever heard of before that a mother should be banished from her children? I was too young to understand it all at first; and I had no habit of acting for myself; and perhaps you would have been right to stop me; but now—”
“Certainly I should have stopped you. But, Rosalind, I have come myself to a similar resolution,” he said. “It mustall be cleared up. But not by you, my dear, not by you. If there is anything to discover that is to her shame—”
“There is nothing, Uncle John.”
“My dear, you don’t know how mysterious human nature is. There are fine and noble creatures such as she is—as she is! don’t think I deny it, Rosalind—who may have yet a spot, a stain, which a man like me may see and grieve for and forgive, but you—”
“Oh, Uncle John, say that a woman like me may wash away with tears, if you like, but that should never, never be betrayed to the eyes of a man!”
He took her into his arms, weeping as she was, and he not far from it. “Rosalind, perhaps yours is the truest way; but yet, as common people think, and according to the way of the world—”
“Which is neither your way nor mine,” cried the girl.
“And you can say nothing to change my mind; I was too young at the time. But now—if she has died,” Rosalind said, with difficulty swallowing down the “climbing sorrow” in her throat, “she will know at least what we meant. And if she is living there is no rest but with our mother for Amy and me. And the child shall not suffer, Uncle John, for she shall have what is mine.”
“Rosalind, you are still in the absolute stage—you see nothing that can modify your purposes. My dear, you should have had your mother to speak to on this subject. There are two men here, Rosalind, to whom—have you not some duty, some obligation? They both seem to me to be waiting—for what, Rosalind?”
Rosalind detached herself from her uncle’s arm. A crimson flush covered her face. “Is it—dishonorable?” she said.
In the midst of his emotion John Trevanion could not suppress a smile. “That is, perhaps, a strong word.”
“It would be dishonorable in a man,” she cried, lifting her eyes with a hot color under them which seemed to scorch her.
“It would be impossible in a man, Rosalind,” he said gravely; “the circumstances are altogether different. And yet you too owe something to Roland, who has loved you all his life, poor fellow, and to Rivers, who has come here neglecting everything for your sake. I do not know,” he added, in a harsher tone, “whether there may not be still another claim.”
“I think you are unjust, Uncle John,” she said, with tremulous dignity. “And if it is as you say, these gentlemen have followed their own inclinations, not mine. Am I bound because they have seen fit— But that would be slavery for a woman.” Then her countenance cleared a little, and she added, “When you know all that is in my mind you will not disapprove.”
“I hope you will make a wise decision, Rosalind,” he said. “But at least do nothing—make up your mind to do nothing—till the time comes.” He spoke vaguely, and so did she, but in the excitement of their minds neither remarked this in the other. For he had not hinted to her, nor her to him, the possibility of some great new event which might happen at any moment and change all plans and thoughts.
Rosalindleft her uncle with the thrill of her resolution in all her veins. She met, as she crossed the ante-room, Rivers, who had just come in and was standing waiting for a reply to the petition to be admitted to see her which he had just sent by a servant. She came upon him suddenly while he stood there, himself wound up to high tension, full of passion and urgency, feeling himself ill-used, and determined that now, at last, this question should be settled. He had failed indeed in pushing his suit by means of the mysterious stranger whom he had not seen again; but this made him only return withadditional vehemence to his own claim, the claim of a man who had waited a year for his answer. But when he saw Rosalind there came over him that instant softening which is so apt to follow an unusual warmth of angry feeling, when we are “wroth with those we love.” He thought at first that she had come to him in answer to his message, granting all he asked by that gracious personal response. “Rosalind!” he cried, putting out his hands. But next moment his countenance reflected the blush in hers, as she turned to him startled, not comprehending and shrinking from this enthusiastic address. “I beg your pardon,” he said, crushing his hat in his hands. “I was taken by surprise. Miss Trevanion, I had just sent to ask—”
Rosalind was seized by a sort of helpless terror. She was afraid of him and his passion. She said, “Uncle John is in his room. Oh, forgive me, please! If it is me, will you wait—oh, will you be so kind as to wait till Thursday? Everything will be settled then. I shall know then what I have to do. Mr. Rivers, I am very sorry to give you so much trouble—”
“Trouble!” he cried; his voice was almost inarticulate in the excess of emotion. “How can you use such words to me? As if trouble had anything to do with it; if you would send me to the end of the earth, so long as it was to serve you, or give me one of the labors of Hercules— Yes, I know I am extravagant. One becomes extravagant in the state of mind in which— And to hear you speak of trouble—”
“Mr. Rivers,” said Rosalind, humble in her sense of guilt, “I have a great many things to think of. You don’t know how serious it is; but on Thursday I shall be of age, and then I can decide. Come then, if you will, and I will tell you. Oh, let me tell you on Thursday—not now!”
“That does not sound very hopeful for me,” he said. “Miss Trevanion, remember that I have waited a year for my answer—few men do that without—without—”
And then he paused, and looked at her with an air whichwas at once fierce and piteous, defiant and imploring. And Rosalind shrank with a sense of guilt, feeling that she had no right to hold him in suspense, yet frightened by his vehemence, and too much agitated to know what to say.
“On Thursday,” she said, mechanically; “on Thursday— You shall not complain of me any more.” She held out her hand to him with a smile, apologetic and deprecatory, which was very sweet, which threw him into a bewilderment unspeakable. She was cruel without knowing it, without intending it. She had, she thought, something to make up to this man, and how could she do it but by kindness—by showing him that she was grateful—that she liked and honored him? He went away asking himself a thousand questions, going over and over her simple words, extracting meanings from them of which they were entirely innocent, framing them at last to the signification which he wished. He started from Bonport full of doubt and uneasiness, but before he reached his hotel a foolish elation had got the better of these sadder sentiments. He said to himself that these words could have but one meaning. “You shall not complain of me any more.” But if she cast him off after this long probation he would have very good reason to complain. It was impossible that she should prepare a refusal by such words; and, indeed, if she had meant to refuse him, could she have postponed her answer again? Is it not honor in a woman to say “No” without delay, unless she means to say “Yes?” It is the only claim of honor upon her, who makes so many claims upon the honor of men, to say “No,” if she means “No.” No one could mistake that primary rule. When she said “Thursday,” was it not the last assurance she could give before a final acceptance, and “You shall not complain of me any more?” This is a consequence of the competitive system in love which Mr. Ruskin evidently did not foresee, for Rosalind, on the other hand, was right enough when she tried to assure herself that she had not wished for his love, had not sought it in any way, that she should be made responsiblefor its discomfiture. Rivers employed his time of suspense in making arrangements for his departure. He was a proud man, and he would not have it said that he had left Aix hastily in consequence of his disappointment. In the evening he wrote some letters, vaguely announcing a speedy return. “Perhaps almost as soon as you receive this,” he said, always guarding against the possibility of a sudden departure; and then he said to himself that such a thing was impossible. This was how he spent the intervening days. He had almost forgotten by this time, in the intensity of personal feeling, the disappointment and shock to his pride involved in the fact that the lady of the garden had appeared no more.
In the meantime, while all this was going on, Reginald was out on the shining water in a boat, which was the first thing the English boy turned to in that urgent necessity for “something to do” which is the first thought of his mind. He had taken Sophy with him condescendingly for want of a better, reflecting contemptuously all the time on the desertion of that beggar Hamerton, with whom he was no longer the first object. But Sophy was by no means without advantages as a companion. He sculled her out half a mile from shore with the intention of teaching her how to row on the way back; but Sophy had made herself more amusing in another way by that time, and he was willing to do the work while she maintained the conversation. Sophy was nearly as good as Scheherazade. She kept up her narrative, or series of narratives, with scarcely a pause to take breath, for she was very young and very long-winded, with her lungs in perfect condition, and her stories had this advantage, to the primitive intelligence that is, that they were all true; which is to say that they were all about real persons, and spiced by that natural inclination to take the worst view of everything, which, unfortunately, is so often justified by the results, and makes a story-teller piquant, popular, and detested. Sophy had a great future before her in this way, and in the meantime she made Reginald acquainted witheverything, as they both concluded, that he ought to know. She told him about Everard, and the saving of Amy and Johnny, which he concluded to be a “plant,” and “just like the fellow;” and about the encouragement Rosalind gave him, at which Rex swore, to the horror, yet delight, of his little sister, great, real oaths. And then the story quickened and the interest rose as she told him about the apparitions, about what the children saw, and, finally, under a vow of secrecy (which she had also administered to Russell), what she herself saw, and the conclusion she had formed. When she came to this point of her story, Reginald was too much excited even to swear. He kept silence with a dark countenance, and listened, leaning forward on his oars with a rapt attention that flattered Sophy. “I told Uncle John,” cried the child, “and he asked me what I was going to do? How could I do anything, Rex? I watched because I don’t believe in ghosts, and I knew it could not be a ghost. But what could I do at my age? And, besides, I did not actually see her so as to speak to her. I only touched her as she passed.”
“And you are sure it was—” The boy was older than Sophy, and understood better. He could not speak so glibly of everything as she did.
“Mamma? Yes, of course I am sure. I don’t take fits like the rest; I always know what I see. Don’t you think Uncle John was the one to do something about it, Rex? And he has not done anything. It could never be thought that it was a thing for me.”
“I’ll tell you what, Sophy,” said Rex, almost losing his oars in his vehemence; “soon it’ll have to be a thing for me. I can’t let things go on like this with all Aunt Sophy’s muddlings and Uncle John’s. The children will be driven out of their senses; and Rosalind is just a romantic— I am the head of the family, and I shall have to interfere.”
“But you are only seventeen,” said Sophy, her eyes starting from their sockets with excitement and delight.
“But I am the head of the house. John Trevanion may give himself as many airs as he likes, but he is only a younger son. After all, it is I that have got to decide what’s right for my family. I have been thinking a great deal about it,” he cried. “If—if—Mrs. Trevanion is to come like this frightening people out of their wits—”
“Oh, Reginald,” cried Sophy, with a mixture of admiration and horror, “how can you call mamma Mrs. Trevanion?”
“That’s her name,” said the boy. His lips quivered a little, to do him justice, and his face was darkly red with passion, which was scarcely his fault, so unnatural were all the circumstances. “I am going to insist that she should live somewhere, so that a fellow may say where she lives. It’s awful when people ask you where’s your mother, not to be able to say. I suppose she has enough to live on. I shall propose to let her choose where she pleases, but to make her stay in one place, so that she can be found when she is wanted. Amy could be sent to her for a bit, and then the fuss would be over—”
“But, Rex, you said we should lose all our money—”
“Oh, bother!” cried the boy. “Who’s to say anything? Should I make a trial and expose everything to take her money from Amy? (It isn’t so very much you have, any of you, that I should mind.) I suppose even, if I insisted, they might take a villa for her here or somewhere. And then one could say she lived abroad for her health. That is what people do every day. I know lots of fellows whose father, or their mother, or some one, lives abroad for their health. It would be more respectable. It would be a thing you could talk about when it was necessary,” Rex said.
Sophy’s mind was scarcely yet open to this view of the question. “I wish you had told me,” she said peevishly, “that one could get out of it like that; for I should have liked to speak to mamma—”
“I don’t know that we can get out of it like that. The law is very funny; it may be impossible, perhaps. But, at allevents,” said Reginald, recovering his oars, and giving one great impulse forward with all his strength, which made the boat shoot along the lake like a living thing, “I know that I won’t let it be muddled any longer if I can help it, and that I am going to interfere.”
Roland Hamertondid not find any trace of her. He had pledged himself easily, in utter ignorance of all ways and means, to find her, knowing nothing, neither how to set about such a search, or where he was likely to meet with success in it. It is easy for a young man, in his fervor, to declare that he is able to do anything for the girl he loves, and to feel that in that inspiration he is sure to carry all before him. But love will not trace the lost even when it is the agony of love for the lost, and that passion of awful longing, anxiety, and fear which is, perhaps, the most profound of all human emotions. The fact that he loved Rosalind did not convert him into that sublimated and heroic version of a detective officer which is to be found more often in fiction than reality. He, too, went to all the hotels, as John Trevanion had done; he walked about incessantly, looking at everybody he met, and trying hard, in his bad French, to push cunning inquiries everywhere—inquiries which he thought cunning, but which were in reality only very innocently anxious, betraying his object in the plainest way. “A tall lady, English, with remains of great beauty.” “Oui, monsieur, nous la connaissons;” a dozen such lively responses were made to him, and he was sent in consequence to wander about as many villas, to prowl in the gardens of various hotels, rewarded by the sight of some fine Englishwomen and some scarecrows, but never with the most distant glimpse of the woman he sought. He did, however, meet and recognize almost at every turn the young fellow whose appearances at Bonport had been few since Rosalind’s repulse, but whom he had seen severaltimes in attendance upon Mrs. Lennox, and of whom he knew that he was understood to have been seen in the village at Highcourt, presumably on account of Rosalind, and was therefore a suitor too, and a rival. Something indefinable in his air, though Roland did not know him sufficiently to be a just judge, had increased at first the natural sensation of angry scorn with which a young lover looks upon another man who has presumed to lift his eyes to the sameobjet adoré; but presently there arose in his mind something of that same sensation of fellowship which had drawn him, on the first night of his arrival, towards Rivers. They were in “the same box.” No doubt she was too good for any of them, and Everard had not the sign and seal of the English gentleman about him—the one thing indispensable; but yet there was a certain brotherhood even in the rivalry. Roland addressed him at last when he met him coming round one of the corners, where he himself was posted, gazing blankly at an English lady pointed out to him by an officious boatman from the lake. His gaze over a wall, his furtive aspect when discovered, all required, he felt, explanation. “I think we almost know each other,” he said, in a not unfriendly tone. Everard took off his hat with the instinct of a man who has acquired such breeding as he has in foreign countries, an action for which, as was natural, the Englishman mildly despised him. “I have seen you, at least, often,” he replied. And then Roland plunged into his subject.
“Look here! You know the Trevanions, don’t you? Oh yes, I heard all about it—the children and all that. I am a very old friend;” Roland dwelt upon these words by way of showing that a stranger was altogether out of competition with him in this respect at least. “There is a lady in whom they are all—very much interested, to say the least, living somewhere about here; but I don’t know where, and nobody seems to know. You seem to be very well up to all the ways of the place; perhaps you could help me. Ros— I mean,” said Roland, with a cough to obliterate the syllable—“they would all be very grateful to any one who would find—”
“What,” said Everard, slowly, looking in Roland’s face, “is the lady’s name?”
It was the most natural question; and yet the one man put it with a depth of significance which to a keener observer than Roland would have proved his previous knowledge; while the other stood entirely disconcerted, and not knowing how to reply. It was perfectly natural; but somehow he had not thought of it as a probable question. And he was not prepared with an answer.
“Oh—ah—her name. Well, she is a kind of a relation, you know—and her name would be—Trevanion.”
“Oh, her name would be Trevanion? Is there supposed to be any chance that she would change her name?”
“Why do you ask such a question?”
“I thought, by the way you spoke, as if there might be a doubt.”
“No,” said Roland, after a moment, “I never thought— I don’t think it’s likely. Why should she change her name?”
Everard answered with great softness, “I don’t know anything about it. Something in your tone suggested the idea, but no doubt I am wrong. No, I cannot say, all in a moment, that I am acquainted—” Here his want of experience told like Roland’s. He was very willing, nay anxious, to deceive, but did not know how. He colored, and made a momentary pause. “But I will inquire,” he said, “if it is a thing that the—Trevanions want to find out.”
Roland looked at him with instinctive suspicion, but he did not know what he suspected. He had no desire, however, to put this quest out of his own hands into those of a man who might make capital of it as he himself intended to do. He said hastily, “Oh, I don’t want to put you to trouble. I think I am on the scent. If you hear anything, however, and would come in and see me at the hotel—to-night.”
The other looked at him with something in his face which Roland did not understand. Was it a kind of sardonic smile?Was it offence? He ended by repeating, “I will inquire,” and took off his hat again in that Frenchified way.
And Roland went on, unaided, somewhat discouraged, indeed, with his inquiries. Sometimes he saw in the distance a figure in the crowd which he thought he recognized, and hurried after it, but never with any success. For either it was gone when he reached the spot, or turned out to be one of the ordinary people about; for of course there were many tall ladies wearing black to be seen about the streets of Aix, and most of them English. He trudged about all that day and the next with a heavy heart, his high hopes abandoning him, and the search seeming hopeless. He became aware when night fell that he was not alone in his quest. There drifted past him at intervals, hurried, flushed, and breathless, with her cloak hanging from her shoulders, her bonnet blown back from her head, her eyes always far in front of her, investigating every corner, a woman so instinct with keen suspicion and what looked like a thirst for blood that she attracted the looks even of the careless passers-by, and was followed, till she outstripped him, by more than one languid gendarme. Her purpose was so much more individual than she was that, for a time, in the features of this human sleuth-hound he failed to recognize Russell. But it was Russell, as he soon saw, with a mixture of alarm and horror. It seemed to him that some tragic force of harm was in this woman’s hand, and that while he wandered vaguely round and round discovering nothing, she, grim with hatred and revenge, was on the track.
WhenJohn Trevanion questioned Everard, as already recorded, the young man, though greatly disconcerted, had made him a very unexpected reply. He had the boldness to say what was so near the truth that there was all the assurance of conviction in his tone; and John, on his side, was confounded.Everard had declared to him that there was a family connection, a relationship, between himself and Mr. Trevanion, though, on being more closely questioned, he declined to explain how it was; that is, he postponed the explanation, saying that he could only make the matter clear by reference to another relation, who could give him the exact information. It was a bold thought, conceived at the moment, and carried through with the daring of desperation. He felt, before it was half said, that John Trevanion was impressed by the reality in his tone, and that if he dared further, and told all his tale, the position of affairs might be changed. But Rosalind’s reply to the sudden declaration which in his boldness he had made, and to his vague, ill-advised promises to reward her if she would listen to him, had driven for some days everything out of his mind; and when he met Roland Hamerton he was but beginning to recall his courage, and to say to himself that there was still something which might be done, and that things were not perhaps so hopeless as they seemed. From that brief interview he went away full of a sudden resolution. If, after all, this card was the one to play, did not he hold it in his hand? If it were by means of the lost mother that Rosalind was to be won, it was by the same means alone that he could prove to John Trevanion, all he had promised to prove, and thus set himself right with Rosalind’s guardian. Thoughts crowded fast upon him as he turned away, instinctively making a round to escape Hamerton’s scrutiny. This led him back at length to the precincts of the hotel, where he plunged among the shrubbery, passing round behind the house, and entered by a small door which was almost hid by a clump of laurels. A short stair led from this to a small, entirely secluded apartment separated from the other part of the hotel. The room which young Everard entered with a sort of authoritative familiarity was well lighted with three large windows opening upon the garden, but seemed to be a sort of receptacle for all the old furniture despised elsewhere. It had but one occupant, whoput down the book when Everard came in, and looked up with a faint, inquiring smile. The reader does not need to be told who was the banished woman who sat here, shut out and separated from the external world. She had thought it wise, amid the risks of travel, to call herself by the name he bore, and had been living here, as everywhere, in complete retirement, before the arrival of the Trevanions. The apartment which she occupied was cheap and quiet, one of which recommendations was of weight with her in consequence of Edmund’s expenses; the other for reasons of her own. She had changed greatly in the course of these two years, not only by becoming very thin and worn, but also from a kind of moral exhaustion which had taken the place of that personal power and dignity which were once the prevailing expression of her face. She had borne much in the former part of her life without having the life itself crushed out of her; but her complete transference to a strange world, her absorption in one sole subject of interest which presented nothing noble, nothing elevated, and, finally, the existence of a perpetual petty conflict in which she was always the loser, a struggle to make a small nature into a great one, or, rather, to deal with the small nature as if it were a great one, to attribute to it finer motives than it could even understand, and to appeal with incessant failure to generosities which did not exist—this had taken the strength out of Mrs. Trevanion. Her face had an air of exhausted and hopeless effort. She saw the young man approaching with a smile, which, though faint, was yet one of welcome. To be ready to receive him whenever he should appear, to be always ready and on the watch for any gleam of higher meaning, to be dull to no better impulse, but always waiting for the good—that was the part she had to play. But she was no longer impatient, no longer eager to thrust him into her own world, to convey to him her own thoughts. That she knew was an endeavor without hope. And, as a matter of fact, she had little hope in anything. She had done all that she knew how to do.If anything further were possible she was unaware what it was; and her face, like her heart, was worn out. Yet she looked up with what was not unlike a cheerful expectation. “Well, Edmund?” she said.
He threw down his hat on the table, giving emphasis to what he said.
“I have brought you some news. I don’t know if you will like it or not, or if it will be a surprise. The Trevanions are after you.”
The smile faded away from her face, but seemed to linger pathetically in her eyes as she looked at him and repeated, “After me!” with a start.
“Yes. Of course all those visits and apparitions couldn’t be without effect. You must have known that; and you can’t say I did not warn you. They are moving heaven and earth—”
“How can they do that?” she asked; and then, “You reproach me justly, Edmund; not so much as I reproach myself. I was made to do it, and frighten—my poor children.”
“More than that,” he said, as if he took a pleasure in adding color to the picture; “the little girl has gone all wrong in her head. She walks in her sleep and says she is looking for her mother.”
The tears sprang to Mrs. Trevanion’s eyes. “Oh, Edmund!” she said, “you wring my heart; and yet it is sweet! My little girl! she does not forget me!”
“Children don’t forget,” he said gloomily. “I didn’t. I cried for you often enough, but you never came to me.”
She gave him once more a piteous look, to which the tears in her eyes added pathos. “Not—till it was too late,” she said.
“Not—till you were obliged; till you had no one else to go to,” said he. “And you have not done very much for me since—nothing that you could help. Look here! You can make up for that now, if you like; there’s every opportunity now.”
“What is it, Edmund?” She relapsed into the chair, whichsupplied a sort of framework on which mind and body seemed alike to rest.
Edmund drew a chair opposite to her, close to her, and threw himself down in it. His hand raised to enhance his rhetoric was almost like the threat of a blow.
“Look here,” he repeated; “I have told you before all I feel about Rosalind!”
“And I have told you,” she said, with a faint, rising color, “that you have no right to call her by that name. There is no sort of link between Miss Trevanion and you.”
“She does not think so,” he answered, growing red. “She has always felt there was a link, although she didn’t know what. There are two other fellows after her now. I know that one of them, and I rather think both of them, are hunting for you, by way of getting a hold on Rosalind. One of them asked me just now if I wouldn’t help him. Me! And that woman that was nurse at Highcourt, that began all the mischief, is here. So you will be hunted out whatever you do. And John Trevanion is at me, asking me what had I to do with his brother? I don’t know how he knows, but he does know. I’ve told him there was a family connection, but that I couldn’t say what till I had consulted—”
“You saidthat, Edmund? A—family connection!”
“Yes, I did. What else could I say? And isn’t it true? Now, here are two things you can do: one would be kind, generous, all that I don’t expect from you; the other would, at least, leave us to fight fair. Look here! I believe they would be quite glad. It would be a way of smoothing up everything and stopping all sorts of scandal. Come up there with me straight and tell them who I am; and tell Rosalind that you want her to cast off the others and marry me. She will do whatever you tell her.”
“Never, never, Edmund.” She had begun to shake her head, looking at him, for some time before he would permit her voice to be heard. “Oh, ask me anything but that!”
“Anything but the only thing,” he said; “that is like you; that is always the way. Can’t you see it would be a way of smoothing over everything? It would free Rosalind—it would free them all; if she were my—”
She put out her hand to stop him. “No, Edmund, you must not say it. I cannot permit it. That cannot be. You do not understand her, nor she you. I can never permit it, even if—even if—”
“Even if—? You mean to say if she were—fond of me—”
Mrs. Trevanion uttered a low cry. “Edmund, I will rather go and tell her, what I have told you—that you could never understand each other—that you are different, wholly different—that nothing of the kind could be—”
He glared at her with a fierce rage, by which she was no longer frightened, which she had seen before, but which produced in her overwrought mind a flutter of the old, sickening misery which had fallen into so hopeless a calm. “That is what you will do for me—when affairs come to an issue!—that is all after everything you have promised, everything you have said—that is all; but I might have known—”
She made no reply. She was so subdued in her nature by all the hopeless struggles of the past that she did not say a word in self-defence.
“Then,” he said, rising up from his chair, throwing out his hands as though putting her out of her place, “go! That’s the only other thing you can do for me. Get out of this. Why stay till they come and drag you out to the light and expose you—and me? If you won’t do the one thing for me, do the other, and make no more mischief, for the love of heaven—if you care for heaven or for love either,” he added, making a stride towards the table and seizing his hat again. He did not, however, rush away then, as seemed his first intention, but stood for a moment irresolute, not looking at her, holding his hat in his hand.
“Edmund,” she said, “you are always sorry afterwards when you say such things to me.”
“No,” he said, “I’m not sorry—don’t flatter yourself— I mean every word I say. You’ve been my worst enemy all my life. And since you’ve been with me it’s been worst of all. You’ve made me your slave; you’ve pretended to make a gentleman of me, and you’ve made me a slave. I have never had my own way or my fling, but had to drag about with you. And now, when you really could do me good—when you could help me to marry the girl I like, and reform, and everything, you won’t. You tell me point-blank you won’t. You say you’ll rather ruin me than help me. Do you call that the sort of a thing a man has a right to expect—after all I have suffered in the past?”
“Edmund, I have always told you that Miss Trevanion—”
“Rosalind!” he said. “Whatever you choose to call her, I shall call her by her name. I have been everything with them till now, when this friend of yours, this Uncle John, has come. And you can put it all right with him, if you please, in a moment, and make my way clear. And now you say you won’t! Oh, yes, I know you well enough. Let all those little things go crazy and everybody be put out, rather than lend a real helping hand to me—”
“Edmund!” she called to him, holding out her hands as he rushed to the door; but he felt he had got a little advantage and would not risk the loss of it again. He turned round for a moment and addressed her with a sort of solemnity.
“To-morrow!” he said. “I’ll give you till to-morrow to think it over, and then— I’ll do for myself whatever I find it best to do.”
For a minute or two after the closing of the door, which was noisy and sharp, there was no further movement in the dim room. Mrs. Trevanion sat motionless, even from thought. The framework of the chair supported her, held her up, but for the moment, as it seemed to her, nothing else in earth and heaven.She sat entirely silent, passive, as she had done so often during these years, all her former habits of mind arrested. Once she had been a woman of energy, to whom a defeat or discouragement was but a new beginning, whose resources were manifold; but all these had been exhausted. She sat in the torpor of that hopelessness which had become habitual to her, life failing and everything in life. As she sat thus an inner door opened, and another figure, which had grown strangely like her own in the close and continual intercourse between them, came in softly. Jane was noiseless as her mistress, almost as worn as her mistress, moving like a shadow across the room. Her presence made a change in the motionless atmosphere. Madam was no longer alone; and with the softening touch of that devotion which had accompanied all her wanderings for so great a portion of her life, there arose in her a certain re-awakening, a faint flowing of the old vitality. There were, indeed, many reasons why the ice should be broken and the stream resume its flowing. She raised herself a little in her chair, and then she spoke. “Jane,” she said; “Jane, I have news of the children—”
“God bless them,” said Jane. She put the books down out of her hands, which she had been pretending to arrange, and turned her face towards her mistress, who said “Amen!” with a sudden gleam and lighting-up of her pale face like the sky after a storm.
“I have done very wrong,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “there is never self-indulgence in the world but some one suffers for it. Jane, my little Amy is ill. She dreams about her poor mother. She has taken to walking in her sleep.”
“Well, Madam, that’s no great harm. I have heard of many children who did—”
“But not through—oh, such selfish folly as mine! I have grown so weak, such a fool! And they have sent for Russell, and Russell is here. You may meet her any day—”
“Russell!” Jane said, with an air of dismay, clasping herhands; “then, Madam, you must make up your mind what you will do, for Russell is not one to be balked. She will find us out.”
“Why should I fear to be found out?” said Mrs. Trevanion, with a faint smile. “No one now can harm me. Jane, everything has been done that can be done to us. I do not fear Russell or any one. And sometimes it seems to me that I have been wrong all along. I think now I have made up my mind—”
“To what? oh, to what, Madam?” Jane cried.
“I am not well,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “I am only a shadow of myself. I am not at all sure but perhaps I may be going to die. No, no— I have no presentiments, Jane. It is only people who want to live who have presentiments, and life has few charms for me. But look at me; you can see through my hands almost. I am dreadfully tired coming up those stairs. I should not be surprised if I were to die.”
She said this apologetically, as if she were putting forth a plea to which perhaps objections might be made.
“You have come through a deal, Madam,” said Jane, with the matter-of-fact tone of her class. “It is no wonder if you are thin; you have had a great deal of anxiety. But trouble doesn’t kill.”
“Sometimes,” said her mistress, with a smile, “in the long run. But I don’t say I am sure. Only, if that were so—there would be no need to deny myself.”
“You will send for the children and Miss Rosalind.” Jane clasped her hands with a cry of anticipation in which her whole heart went forth.
“That would be worth dying for,” said Madam, “to have them all peaceably for perhaps a day or two. Ah! but I would need to be very bad before we could do that; and I am not ill, not that I know. I have thought of something else, Jane. It appears that they have found out, or think they have found out, that I am here. I cannot just steal away again as I did before. I will go to them and see them all. Ah, don’t lookso pleased; that probably means that we shall have to leave afterwards at once. Unless things were to happen so well, you know,” she said, with a smile, “as that I should just really—die there; which would be ideal—but therefore not to be hoped for.”
“Oh, Madam,” said Jane, with a sob, “you don’t think, when you say that—”
“Of you, my old friend? But I do. You would be glad to think, after a while, that I had got over it all. And what could happen better to me than that I should die among my own? I am of little use to Edmund—far less than I hoped. Perhaps I had no right to hope. One cannot give up one’s duties for years, and then take them back again. God forgive me for leaving him, and him for all the faults that better training might have saved him from. All the tragedy began in that, and ends in that. I did wrong, and the issue is—this.”
“So long ago, Madam—so long ago. And it all seemed so simple.”
“To give up my child for his good, and then to be forced to give up my other children, not for their good or mine? I sometimes wonder how it was that I never told John Trevanion, who was always my friend. Why did I leave Highcourt so, without a word to any one? It all seems confused now, as if I might have done better. I might have cleared myself, at least; I might have told them. I should like to give myself one great indulgence, Jane, before I die.”
“Madam!” Jane cried, with a panic which her words belied, “I am sure that it is only fancy; you are not going to die.”
“Perhaps,” said her mistress; “I am not sure at all. I told you so; but only I should not be surprised. Whether it is death or whether it is life, something new is coming. We must be ghosts no longer; we must come back to our real selves, you and I, Jane. We will not let ourselves be hunted down, but come out in the eye of day. It would be strange if Russell had the power to frighten me. And did I tell youthat Reginald is here, too, and young Roland Hamerton, who was at Highcourt that night? They are all gathered together again for the end of the tragedy, Jane.”
“Oh, Madam,” cried Jane, “perhaps for setting it all right.”
Her mistress smiled somewhat dreamily. “I do not see how that can be. And, even if it were so, it will not change the state of affairs. But we are not going to allow ourselves to be found out by Russell,” she added, with a curious sense of the ludicrous. The occasion was not gay, and yet there was something natural, almost a sound of amusement, in the laugh with which she spoke. Jane looked at her wistfully, shaking her head.
“When I think of all that you have gone through, and that you can laugh still!—but perhaps it is better than crying,” Jane said.
Mrs. Trevanion nodded her head in assent, and there was silence in the dim room where these two women spent their lives. It gave her a certain pleasure to see Jane moving about. There was a sort of lull of painful sensation, a calm, and disinclination for any exertion on her own part; a mood in which it was grateful to see another entirely occupied with her wants; anxious only to invent more wants for her, and means of doing her service. In the languor of this quiet it was not wonderful that Mrs. Trevanion should feel her life ebbing away. She began to look forward to the end of the tragedy with a pleased acquiescence. She had yielded to her fate at first, understanding it to be hopeless to strive against it; with, perhaps, a recoil from actual contact with the scandal and the shame which was as much pride as submission; but at that time her strength was not abated, nor any habit of living lost. Now that period of anguish seemed far off, and she judged herself and her actions not without a great pity and understanding, but yet not without some disapproval. She thought over it all as she sat lying back in the great chair, with Jane moving softly about. She would not repeat the decisive and hasty step she had oncetaken. She could not now, alas, believe in the atonement which she then thought might still be practicable in respect to the son whom she had given up in his childhood; nor did she think that it was well, as she had done then, to abandon everything without a word—to leave her reputation at the mercy of every evil-speaker. To say nothing for herself, to leave her dead husband’s memory unassailed by any defence she could put forth, and to cut short the anguish of parting, for her children as well as for herself, had then seemed to her the best. And she had fondly thought, with what she now called vanity and the delusion of self-regard, that, by devoting herself to him who was the cause of all her troubles, she might make up for the evils which her desertion of him had inflicted. These were mistakes, she recognized now, and must not be repeated. “I was a fool,” she said to herself softly, with a realization of the misery of the past which was acute, yet dim, as if the sufferer had been another person. Jane paused at the sound of her voice, and came towards her—“Madam, did you speak?”
“No, except to myself. My faithful Jane, you have suffered everything with me. We are not going to hide ourselves any longer,” she replied.
A resolutionthus taken is not, however, strong enough to overcome the habits which have grown with years. Mrs. Trevanion had been so long in the background that she shrank from the idea of presenting herself again to what seemed to her the view of the world. She postponed all further steps with a conscious cowardice, at which, with faint humor, she was still able to smile.
“We are two owls,” she said. “Jane, we will make a little reconnaissance first in the evening. There is still a moon, though it is a little late, and the lake in the moonlight is a fine sight.”
“But, Madam, you were not thinking of the lake,” said Jane.
“No,” her mistress said; “the sight of a roof and four walls within which are—that is more to you and me than the most beautiful scenery in the world. And to think for how many years I had nothing to do but to walk from my room to the nursery to see them all!”
Jane shook her head with silent sympathy. “And it will be so again,” she said, soothingly, “when Mr. Rex is of age. I have always said to myself it would come right then.”
It was now Madam’s turn to shake her head. The smile died away from her face. “I would rather not,” she said, hurriedly, “put him to that proof. It would be a terrible test to put a young creature to. Oh, no, no, Jane! If he failed, how could I bear it?—or did for duty what should be done for love? No, no; the boy must not be put to such a test.”
In the evening she carried out her idea of making a reconnaissance. She set out when the moon was rising in a vaporous autumnal sky, clearing slowly as the light increased. Madam threw back the heavy veil which she usually wore, and breathed in the keen, sweet air with almost a pang of pleasure. She grasped Jane’s arm as they drove slowly round the tufted mound upon which the house of Bonport stood; then, as the coachman paused for further instructions in the shade of a little eminence on the farther side, she whispered breathlessly that she would walk a little way, and see it nearer. They got out, accordingly, both mistress and maid, tremulous with excitement. All was so still; not a creature about; the lighted windows shining among the trees; there seemed no harm in venturing within the gate, which was open, in ascending the slope a little way. Mrs. Trevanion had begun to say faintly, half to herself, half to her companion, “This is vanity; it is no use,” when, suddenly, her grasp upon Jane’s arm tightened so that the faithful maid had to make an effort not to cry out. “What is that?” she said, in a shrill whisper, at Jane’s ear. It wasnothing more than a little speck, but it moved along under the edge of the overhanging trees, with evident life in it; a speck which, as it emerged into the moonlight, became of a dazzling whiteness, like a pale flame gliding across the solid darkness. They both stood still for a moment in awe and wonder, clinging to each other. Then Madam forsook her maid’s arm, and went forward with a swift and noiseless step very different from her former lingering. Jane followed, breathless, afraid, not capable of the same speed. No doubt had been in Mrs. Trevanion’s mind from the first. The night air lifted now and then a lock of the child’s hair, and blew cold through her long, white night-dress, but she went on steadily towards the side of the lake. Once more Amy was absorbed in her dream that her mother was waiting for her there; and, and unconscious, wrapped in her sleep, had set out to find the one great thing wanting in her life. The mother followed her, conscious of nothing save a great throbbing of head and heart. Thus they went on till the white breadth of the lake, flooded with moonlight, lay before them. Then, for the first time, Amy wavered. She came to a pause; something disturbed the absorption of her state, but without awaking her. “Mamma,” she said, “where are you, mamma?”
“I am here, my darling.” Mrs. Trevanion’s voice was choked, and scarcely audible, in the strange mystery of this encounter. She dared not clasp her child in her arms, but stood trembling, watching every indication, terrified to disturb the illusion, yet hungering for the touch of the little creature who was her own. Amy’s little face showed no surprise, its lines softened with a smile of pleasure; she put out her cold hand and placed it in that which trembled to receive it. It was no wonder to Amy, in her dream, to put her hand into her mother’s. She gave herself up to this beloved guidance without any surprise or doubt, and obeyed the impulse given her without the least resistance, with a smile of heavenly satisfaction on her face. All Amy’s troubles were over when her hand was in her mother’s hand.Nor was her little soul, in its soft confusion and unconsciousness, aware of any previous separation, or any transport of reunion. She went where her mother led, calm as if that mother had never been parted from her. As for Mrs. Trevanion, the tumult of trouble and joy in her soul is impossible to describe. She made an imperative gesture to Jane, who had come panting after her, and now stood half stupefied in the way, only prevented by that stupor of astonishment from bursting out into sobs and cries. Her mistress could not speak; her face was not visible in the shadow as she turned her back upon the lake which revealed this wonderful group fully against its shining background. There was no sound audible but the faint stir of the leaves, the plash of the water, the cadence of her quick breathing. Jane followed in an excitement almost as overpowering. There was not a word said. Mrs. Trevanion turned back and made her way through the trees, along the winding path, with not a pause or mistake. It was dark among the bushes, but she divined the way, and though both strength and breath would have failed her in other circumstances, there was no sign of faltering now. The little terrace in front of the house, to which they reached at last, was brilliant with moonlight. And here she paused, the child standing still in perfect calm, having resigned her very soul into her mother’s hands.
Then, for the first time, a great fainting and trembling seized upon her. She held out her disengaged hand to Jane. “What am I to do?” she said, with an appeal to which Jane, trembling, could give no reply. The closed doors, the curtained windows, were all dark. A momentary struggle rose in Mrs. Trevanion’s mind, a wild impulse to carry the child away, to take her into her bosom, to claim her natural rights, if never again, yet for this night—mingled with a terror that seemed to take her senses from her, lest the door should suddenly open, and she be discovered. Her strength forsook her when she most wanted it. Amy stood still by her side, without a movement, calm, satisfied, wrapped in unconsciousness, knowing nothing save that shehad attained her desire, feeling neither cold nor fear in the depth of her dream.
“Madam,” said Jane, in an anxious whisper, “the child will catch her death. I’d have carried her. She has nothing on but her nightdress. She will catch her death.”
This roused the mother in a moment, with the simplest but most profound of arguments. She bade Jane knock at the door, and, stooping over Amy, kissed her and blessed her. Then she transferred the little hand in hers to that of her faithful maid. A shiver passed through the child’s frame, but she permitted herself to be led to the door. Jane was not so self-restrained as her mistress. She lifted the little girl in her arms and began to chafe and rub her feet. The touch, though was warm and kind, woke the little somnambulist, as the touch of the cold water had done before. She gave a scream and struggled out of Jane’s arms.
And then there was a great sound of movement and alarm from the house. The door was flung open and Rosalind rushed out and seized Amy in her arms. She was followed by half the household, the servants hurrying out one after another; and there arose a hurried tumult of questions in the midst of which Jane stole away unnoticed and escaped among the bushes, like her mistress. Mrs. Trevanion stood quite still supporting herself against a tree while all this confused commotion went on. She distinguished Russell, who came out and looked so sharply about among the dark shrubs that for a moment she felt herself discovered, and John Trevanion, who appeared with a candle in his hand, lifting it high above his head, and inquiring who it was that had brought the child back. John’s face was anxious and full of trouble; and behind him came a tall boy, slight and fair, who said there was nobody, and that Amy must have come back by herself. Then Mrs. Lennox came out with a shawl over her head, the flickering lights showing her full, comfortable person—“Who is it, John? Is there anybody? Oh, come in then, come in; it isa cold night, and the child must be put to bed.” All of them stood about in their individuality, as she had left them, while she looked on in the darkness under the rustling boughs, invisible, her eyes sometimes blurred with moisture, a smile growing about her mouth. They had not changed, except the boy—her boy! She kept her eyes on his face, through the thick shade of the leaves and the flickering of the candles. He was almost a man, God bless him—a slight mustache on his upper lip, his hair darker—and so tall, like the best of the Trevanions— God bless him! But no, no, he must not be put to that test—never to that test. She would not permit it, she said to herself, with a horrible sensation in her heart, which she did not put into words, that he could not bear it. She did not seem able to move from the support of her tree even after the door was closed and all was silent again. Jane, in alarm, groped about the bushes till she had found her mistress, but did not succeed in leading her away. “A little longer,” she said, faintly. After a while a large window on the other side of the door opened and John Trevanion came out again into the moonlight, walking up and down on the terrace with a very troubled face. By and by another figure appeared, and Rosalind joined him. “I came to tell you she is quite composed now—going to sleep again,” said Rosalind. “Oh, Uncle John, something is going to happen; it is coming nearer and nearer. I am sure that, either living or dead, Amy has seen mamma.”