“Well,” said Dr. Beaton, rubbing his hands as he came forward, “at last we are tolerably comfortable. I have got him to bed without much more difficulty than usual, and I hope he will have a good night. But how cold it is here! I suppose, however careful you may be, it is impossible to keep draughts out of an apartment that communicates with the open air. If you will take my advice, Miss Rosalind, you will get to your warm room, and to bed, while your uncle and I adjourn to the smoking-room, where there are creature comforts—”
The doctor was always cheerful. He laughed as if all the incidents of the evening had been the most pleasant in the world.
“Is papa better, doctor?”
“Is Mrs. Trevanion with my brother?”
These two questions were asked together. The doctor answered them both with a “Yes—yes—where would she be but with him? My dear sir, you are a visitor, you are not used to our ways. All that is just nothing. He cannot do without her. We know better, Miss Rosalind; we take it all very easy. Come, come, there is nothing to be disturbed about. I willhave you on my hands if you don’t mind. My dear young lady, go to bed.”
“I have been proposing that she should go to her aunt for a week or two for a little change.”
“The very best thing she could do. This is the worst time of the year for Highcourt. So much vegetation is bad in November. Yes—change by all means. But not,” said the doctor, with a little change of countenance, “too long, and not too far away.”
“Do you think,” said Rosalind, “that mamma will not want me to-night? then I will go as you say. But if you think there is any chance that she will want me—”
“She will not leave the patient again. Good-night, Miss Rosalind, sleep sound and get back your roses—or shall I send you something to make you sleep? No? Well, youth will do it, which is best.”
She took her candle, and went wearily up the great staircase, pausing, a white figure in the gloom, to wave her hand to Uncle John before she disappeared in the gallery above. The two men stood and watched her without a word. A tender reverence and pity for her youth was in both their minds. There was almost an oppression of self-restraint upon them till she was out of sight and hearing. Then John Trevanion turned to his companion:
“I gather by what you say that you think my brother worse to-night.”
“Not worse to-night; but only going the downhill road, and now and then at his own will and pleasure putting on a spurt. The nearer you get to the bottom the greater is the velocity. Sometimes the rate is terrifying at the last.”
“And you think, accordingly, that if she goes away it must not be too far; she must be within reach of a hasty summons?”
Dr. Beaton nodded his head several times in succession. “I may be mistaken,” he said, “there is a vitality that fairly surprises me; but that is in any other case what I should say.”
“Have these outbursts of temper much to do with it? Are they accelerating the end?”
“That’s the most puzzling question you could ask. How is a poor medical man, snatching his bit of knowledge as he can find it, to say yea or nay? Oh yes, they have to do with it; everything has to do with it either as cause or effect? If it were not perhaps for the temper, there would be less danger with the heart; and if it were not for the weak heart, there would be less temper. Do ye see? Body and soul are so jumbled together, it is ill to tell which is which. But between them the chances grow less and less. And you will see, by to-night’s experience, it’s not very easy to put on the drag.”
“And yet Mrs. Trevanion is nursing him, you say, as if nothing had happened.”
The doctor gave a strange laugh. “A sick man is a queer study,” he said, “and especially an excitable person with no self-control and all nerves and temper, like—if you will excuse me for saying so—your brother. Now that he needs her he is very capable of putting all this behind him. He will just ignore it, and cast himself upon her for everything, till he thinks he can do without her again. Ah! it is quite a wonderful mystery, the mind of a sick and selfish man.”
“I was thinking rather of her,” said John Trevanion.
“Oh! her?” said the doctor, waving his hand; “that’s simple. There’s nothing complicated in that. She is the first to accept that grand reason as conclusive, just that he has need of her. There’s a wonderful philosophy in some women. When they come to a certain pitch they will bear anything. And she is one of that kind. She will put it out of her mind as I would put a smouldering bombshell out of this hall. At least,” said the doctor, with that laugh which was so inappropriate, “I hope I would do it, I hope I would not just run away. The thing with women is that they cannot run away.”
“These are strange subjects to discuss with—pardon me—a stranger; but you are not a stranger—they can have no secretsfrom you. Doctor, tell me, is the scene to-night a usual one? Was there nothing particular in it?”
John Trevanion fixed very serious eyes—eyes that held the person they looked on fast, and would permit no escape—on the doctor’s face. The other shifted about uneasily from one foot to the other, and did his utmost to avoid that penetrating look.
“Oh, usual enough, usual enough; but there might be certain special circumstances,” he said.
“You mean that Mrs. Trevanion—”
“Well, if you will take my opinion, she had probably been to see the coachman’s wife, who is far from well, poor body; I should say that was it. It is across a bit of the park, far enough to account for everything.”
“But why then not give so simple a reason?”
“Ah! there you beat me; how can I tell? The way in which a thing presents itself to a woman’s mind is not like what would occur to you and me.”
“Is the coachman’s wife so great a favorite? Has she been ill long, and is it necessary to go to see her every night?”
“Mr. Trevanion,” said the doctor, “you are well acquainted with the nature of evidence. I cannot answer all these questions. There is no one near Highcourt, as you are aware, that does not look up to Madam; a visit from her is better than physic. She has little time, poor lady, for such kindness. With all that’s exacted from her, I cannot tell, for my part, what other moment she can call her own.”
John Trevanion would not permit the doctor to escape. He held him still with his keen eyes. “Doctor,” he said, “I think I am as much concerned as you are to prove her in the right, whatever happens; but it seems to me you are a special pleader—making your theory to fit the circumstances, ingenious rather than certain.”
“Mr. John Trevanion,” said the doctor, solemnly, “there is one thing I am certain of, that yon poor lady by your brother’sbedside is a good woman, and that the life he leads her is just a hell on earth.”
After this there was a pause. The two men stood no longer looking at each other: they escaped from the scrutiny of each other, which they had hitherto kept up, both somewhat agitated and shaken in the solicitude and trouble of the house.
“I believe all that,” said John Trevanion at last. “I believe every word. Still— But yet—”
Dr. Beaton made no reply. Perhaps these monosyllables were echoing through his brain too. He had known her for years, and formed his opinion of her on the foundation of long and intimate knowledge. But still—and yet: could a few weeks, a few days, undo the experience of years? It was no crime to walk across the park at night, in the brief interval which the gentlemen spent over their wine after dinner. Why should not Madam Trevanion take the air at that hour if she pleased? Still he made no answer to that breath of doubt.
The conversation was interrupted by the servants who came to close doors and windows, and perform the general shutting-up for the night. Neither of the gentlemen was sorry for this interruption. They separated to make that inevitable change in their dress which the smoking-room demands, with a certain satisfaction in getting rid of the subject, if even for a moment. But when Dr. Beaton reached, through the dim passages from which all life had retired, that one centre of light and fellowship, the sight of young Hamerton in his evening coat, with a pale and disturbed countenance, brought back to him the subject he had been so glad to drop. Hamerton had forgotten his dress-coat, and even that smoking-suit which was the joy of his heart. He had been a prisoner in the drawing-room, or rather in the conservatory, while that terrible scene went on. Never in his harmless life had he touched the borders of tragedy before, and he was entirely unmanned. The doctor found him sitting nervously on the edge of a chair, peering into the fire, his face haggard, his eyes vacant and bloodshot. “I say,doctor,” he said, making a grasp at his arm, “I want to tell you; I was in there all the time. What could I do? I couldn’t get out with the others. I had been in the conservatory before—and I saw— Good gracious, you don’t think I wanted to see! I thought it was better to keep quiet than to show that I had been there all the time.”
“You ought to have gone away with the others,” said the doctor, “but there is no great harm done; except to your nerves; you look quite shaken. He was very bad. When a man lets himself go on every occasion, and does and says exactly what he has a mind to, that’s what it ends in at the last. It is, perhaps, as well that a young fellow like you should know.”
“Oh, hang it,” said young Hamerton, “that is not the worst. I never was fond of old Trevanion. It don’t matter so much about him.”
“You mean that to hear a man bullying his wife like that makes you wish to kill him, eh? Well, that’s a virtuous sentiment; but she’s been long used to it. Let us hope she is like the eels and doesn’t mind—”
“It’s not that,” said the youth again. John Trevanion was in no hurry to appear, and the young man’s secret scorched him. He looked round suspiciously to make sure there was no one within sight or hearing. “Doctor,” he said, “you are Madam’s friend. You take her side?”
Dr. Beaton, who was a man of experience, looked at the agitation of his companion with a good deal of curiosity and some alarm. “If she had a side, yes, to the last of my strength.”
“Then I don’t mind telling you. When he began to swear— What an old brute he is!”
“Yes? when he began to swear—”
“I thought they mightn’t like it, don’t you know? We’re old friends at home, but still I have never been very much at Highcourt; so I thought they mightn’t like to have me there. And I thought I’d just slip out of the way into the conservatory, never thinking how I was to get back. I went right into the end part where there was no light. You can see out into the park. I never thought of that. I was not thinking anything: when I saw—”
“Get it out, for Heaven’s sake! You had no right to be there. What did you see? Some of the maids about—”
“Doctor, I must get it off my mind. I saw Madam Trevanion parting with—a man. I can’t help it, I must get it out. I saw her as plainly as I see you.”
The doctor was very much disturbed and pale, but he burst into a laugh. “In a dark night like this! You saw her maid I don’t doubt, or a kitchen girl with her sweetheart. At night all the cats are gray. And you think it is a fine thing to tell a cock-and-bull story like this—you, a visitor in the house?”
“Doctor, you do me a great deal of injustice.” The young man’s heart heaved with agitation and pain. “Don’t you see it is because I feel I was a sort of eavesdropper against my will, that I must tell you? Do you think Madam Trevanion could be mistaken for a maid? I saw her—part from him and come straight up to the house—and then, in another moment, she came into the room, and I—I saw all that happened there.”
“For an unwilling witness, Mr. Hamerton, you seem to have seen a great deal,” said the doctor, with a gleam of fury in his eyes.
“So I was—unwilling, most unwilling: you said yourself my nerves were shaken. I’d rather than a thousand pounds I hadn’t seen her. But what am I to do? If there was any trial or anything, would they call me as a witness? That’s what I want to ask. In that case I’ll go off to America or Japan or somewhere. They sha’n’t get a word against her out of me.”
The moral shock which Dr. Beaton had received was great, and yet he scarcely felt it to be a surprise. He sat for some moments in silence, pondering how to reply. The end of his consideration was that he turned round upon the inquirer with a laugh. “A trial,” he said, “about what? Because Mr. Trevanionis nasty to his wife, and says things to her a man should be ashamed to say? Women can’t try their husbands for being brutes, more’s the pity! and she is used to it; or because (if it was her at all) she spoke to somebody she met—a groom most likely—and gave him his orders! No, no, my young friend, there will be no trial. But for all that,” he added, somewhat fiercely, “I would advise you to hold your tongue on the subject now that you have relieved your mind. The Trevanions are kittle customers when their blood’s up. I would hold my tongue for the future if I were you.”
And then John Trevanion came in, cloudy and thoughtful, in his smoking-coat, with a candle in his hand.
Reginald Trevanionof Highcourt had made at thirty a marriage which was altogether suitable, and everything that the marriage of a young squire of good family and considerable wealth ought to be, with a young lady from a neighboring county with a pretty face and a pretty fortune, and connections of the most unexceptionable kind. He was not himself an amiable person even as a young man, but no one had ever asserted that his temper or his selfishness or his uneasy ways had contributed to bring about the catastrophe which soon overwhelmed the young household. A few years passed with certain futile attempts at an heir which came to nothing; and it was thought that the disappointment in respect to Rosalind, who obstinately insisted upon turning out a girl, notwithstanding her poor young mother’s remorseful distress and her father’s refusal to believe that Providence could have played him so cruel a trick, had something to do with the gradual fading away of young Madam Trevanion. She died when Rosalind was but a few weeks old, and her husband, whom all the neighborhood credited with a broken heart, disappeared shortly afterinto that vague world known in a country district as “Abroad;” where healing, it is to be supposed, or at least forgetfulness, is to be found for every sorrow. Nothing was known of him for a year or two. His brother, John Trevanion, was then a youth at college, and, as Highcourt was shut up during its master’s absence, disposed of his vacation among other branches of the family, and never appeared; while Sophy, the only sister, who had married long before, was also lost to the district. And thus all means of following the widower in his wanderings were lost to his neighbors. When Mr. Trevanion returned, three years after his first wife’s death, the first intimation that he had married again was the appearance of the second Madam Trevanion by his side in the carriage. The servants, indeed, had been prepared by a letter, received just in time to enable them to open hurriedly the shut-up rooms, and make ready for a lady; but that was all. Of course, as everybody allowed, there was nothing surprising in the fact. It is to be expected that a young widower, especially if heartbroken, will marry again; the only curious thing was that no public intimation of the event should have preceded the arrival of the pair. There had been nothing in the papers, no intimation “At the British Embassy—,” no hint that an English gentleman from one of the Midland counties was about to bring home a charming wife. And, as a matter of fact, nobody had been able to make out who Mrs. Trevanion was. Her husband and she had met abroad. That was all that was ever known. For a time the researches of the parties interested were very active, and all sorts of leading questions were put to the new wife. But she was of force superior to the country ladies, and baffled them all. And the calm of ordinary existence closed over Highcourt, and the questions in course of time were forgot. Madam Trevanion was not at all of the class of her predecessor. She was not pretty like that gentle creature. Even those who admired her least owned that she was striking, and many thought her handsome,and some beautiful. She was tall; her hair and her eyes were dark; she had the wonderful grace of bearing and movement which is associated with the highest class, but no more belongs to it exclusively than any other grace or gift. Between Madam Trevanion and the Duchess of Newbury, who was herself a duke’s daughter, and one of the greatest ladies in England, no chance spectator would have hesitated for a moment as to which was the highest; and yet nobody knew who she was. It was thought by some persons that she showed at first a certain hesitation about common details of life which proved that she had not been born in the purple. But, if so, all that was over before she had been a year at Highcourt, and her manners were pronounced by the best judges to be perfect. She was not shy of society as a novice would have been, nor was her husband diffident in taking her about, as a proud man who has married beneath him so generally is. They accepted all their invitations like people who were perfectly assured of their own standing, and they saw more company at Highcourt than that venerable mansion had seen before for generations. And there was nothing to which society could take exception in the new wife. She had little Rosalind brought home at once, and was henceforth as devoted as any young mother could be to the lovely little plaything of a three-years-old child. Then she did her duty by the family as it becomes a wife to do. The first was a son, as fine a boy as was ever born to a good estate, a Trevanion all over, though he had his mother’s eyes—a boy that never ailed anything, as robust as a young lion. Five or six others followed, of whom two died; but these were ordinary incidents of life which establish a family in the esteem and sympathy of its neighbors. The Trevanions had fulfilled all that was needed to be entirely and fully received into the regard of the county when they “buried,” as people say, their two children. Four remained, the first-born, young Reginald, and his next sister, who were at the beginning of this history fourteen and nine respectively,and the two little ones of five and seven, who were also, to fulfil all requirements, girl and boy.
But of all these Rosalind had remained, if that may be said of a step-child when a woman has a family of her own, the favorite, the mother’s constant companion, everything that an eldest girl could be. Neither the one nor the other ever betrayed a consciousness that they were not mother and daughter. Mr. Trevanion himself, when in his capricious, irritable way he permitted any fondness to appear, preferred Reginald, who was his heir and personal representative. But Rosalind was always by her mother’s side. But for Russell, the nurse, and one or two other injudicious persons, she would probably never have found out that Madam was not her mother; but the discovery had done good rather than harm, by inspiring the natural affection with a passionate individual attachment in which there were all those elements of choice and independent election which are the charm of friendship. Mrs. Trevanion was Rosalind’s example, her heroine, the perfect type of woman to her eyes. And, indeed, she was a woman who impressed the general mind with something of this character. There are many good women who do not do so, who look commonplace enough in their life, and are only known in their full excellence from some revelation afterwards of heroism unknown. But Mrs. Trevanion carried her diploma in her eyes. The tenderness in them was like sunshine to everybody about her who was in trouble. She never was harsh, never intolerant, judged nobody—which in a woman so full of feeling and with so high a standard of moral excellence was extraordinary. This was what gave so great a charm to her manners. A well-bred woman, even of an inferior type, will not allow a humble member of society to feel himself or herselfde trop; but there are many ways of doing this, and the ostentatious way of showing exaggerated attention to an unlucky stranger is as painful to a delicate mind as neglect. But this was a danger which Mrs. Trevanion avoided. No one could tell whatthe rank was of the guests in her drawing-room, whether it was the duchess or the governess that was receiving her attentions. They were all alike gentlewomen in this gracious house. The poor, who are always the hardest judges of a new claimant of their favor, and who in this case were much set on finding out that a woman who came from “abroad” could be no lady, gave in more reluctantly, yet yielded too like their betters—with the exception of Russell and the family in the village to which she belonged. These were the only enemies, so far as any one was aware, whom Madam possessed, and they were enemies of a visionary kind, in no open hostility, receiving her favors like the rest, and kept in check by the general state of public opinion. Still, if there was anything to be found out about the lady of Highcourt, these were the only hostile bystanders desirous of the opportunity of doing her harm.
But everything had fallen into perfect peace outside the house for years. Now and then, at long intervals, it might indeed be remarked in the course of a genealogical conversation such as many people love, that it was not known who Mrs. Trevanion the second had been. “His first wife was a Miss Warren, one of the Warrens of Warrenpoint. The present one—well, I don’t know who she was; they married abroad.” But that was all that now was ever said. It would be added probably that she was very handsome, or very nice, or quitecomme il faut, and so her defect of parentage was condoned. Everything was harmonious, friendly, and comfortable outside. The county could not resist her fine manners, her looks, her quiet assumption of the place that belonged to her. But within doors Mrs. Trevanion soon came to know that no very peaceful life was to be expected. There were people who said that she had not the look of a happy woman even when she first came home. In repose her face was rather sad than otherwise at all times. Mr. Trevanion was still in the hot fit of a bridegroom’s enthusiasm when he brought her home, but even then he was the most troublesome, the most exacting,the most fidgety of bridegrooms. Her patience with all his demands was boundless. She would change her dress half a dozen times in an evening to please him. She would start off with him on a sudden wild expedition at half an hour’s notice, without a word or even look of annoyance. And when the exuberance of love wore off, and the exactions continued, with no longer caresses and sweet words, but blame and reproach and that continual fault-finding which it is so hard to put up with amiably, Mrs. Trevanion still endured everything, consented to everything, with a patience that would not be shaken. It was now nearly ten years since the heart-disease which had brought him nearly to death’s door first showed itself. He had rheumatic fever, and then afterwards, as is so usual, this terrible legacy which that complaint leaves behind it. From that moment, of course, the patience which had been so sweetly exercised before became a religious duty. It was known in the house that nothing must cross or agitate or annoy Mr. Trevanion. But, indeed, it was not necessary that anything should annoy him; he was his own chief annoyance, his own agitator. He would flame up in sudden wrath at nothing at all, and turn the house upside down, and send everybody but his wife flying, with vituperations which scarcely the basest criminal could have deserved. And his wife, who never abandoned him, became the chief object of these passionate assaults. He accused her of every imaginable fault. He began to talk of all she owed him, to declare that he married her when she had nothing, that he had taken her out of the depths, that she owed everything to him; he denounced her as ungrateful, base, trying to injure his health under pretence of nursing him, that she might get the power into her own hands. But she would find out her mistake, he said; she would learn, when he was gone, the difference between having a husband to protect her and nobody. To all these wild accusations and comments the little circle round Mrs. Trevanion had become familiar and indifferent. “Pegging away at Madam, as usual,” Mr. Dorrington,the butler, said. “Lord, I’d let him peg! I’d leave him to himself and see how he likes it,” replied the cook and housekeeper. No one had put the slightest faith in the objurgations of the master. To Rosalind they were the mere extravagances of that mad temper which she had been acquainted with all her life. What her father said about his wife was about as reasonable as his outburst of certainty that England was going to the devil when the village boys broke down one of the young trees. She did not judge papa for such a statement. She cried a little at his vehemence, which did himself so much harm, and laughed a little secretly, with a heavy sense of guilt, at his extravagance and exaggerations. Poor papa! it was not his fault, it was because he was so ill. He was too weak and ailing to be able to restrain himself as other people did. But he did not mean it—how could he mean it? To say that mamma wanted to break his neck if she did not put his pillow as he liked it, to accuse her of a systematic attempt to starve him if his luncheon was two minutes late or his soup not exactly to his taste—all that was folly. And no doubt it was also folly, all that about raising her from nothing and taking her without a penny. Rosalind, though very much disturbed when she was present at one of these scenes, yet permitted herself to laugh at it when it was over or she had got away. Poor papa! and then when he had raged himself into a fit of those heart-spasms he was so ill; how sad to see him suffering so terribly, gasping for breath! Poor papa! to think that he did so much to bring it on himself was only a pity the more.
Thus things had gone on for years. When Dr. Beaton came to live in the house there had been a temporary amendment. The presence of a stranger, perhaps, had been a check upon the patient; and perhaps the novelty of a continual and thoroughly instructed watcher—who knew how to follow the symptoms of the malady, and foresaw an outburst before it came—did something for him; and certainly there had beenan amendment. But by and by familiarity did away with these advantages. Dr. Beaton exhausted all the resources of his science, and Mr. Trevanion ceased to be upon his guard with a man whom he saw every day. Thus the house lived in a forced submission to the feverish vagaries of its head; and he himself sat and railed at everybody, pleased with nothing, claiming every thought and every hour, but never contented with the service done him. And greater and greater became the force of his grievances against his wife and his sense of having done everything for her; how he had stood by her when nobody else would look at her, how he had lifted her out of some vague humiliation and abandonment, how she owed him everything, yet treated him with brutal carelessness, and sought his death, were the most favorite accusations on his lips. Mrs. Trevanion listened with a countenance that rarely showed any traces of emotion. She had shrunk a little at first from these painful accusations; but soon had come to listen to them with absolute calm. She had borne them like a saint, like a philosopher; and yet within the last month everybody saw there had been a change.
WhenMrs. Trevanion came to Highcourt, she brought with her a maid who had, during all the sixteen years of her married life, remained with her without the slightest breach of fidelity or devotion. Jane was, the household thought, somewhat like her mistress, a resemblance in all likelihood founded upon the constant attendance of the one upon the other, and the absorbing admiration, rising almost to a kind of worship, with which Jane regarded her lady. After all, it was only in figure and movement, not in face, that the resemblance existed. Jane was tall like Mrs. Trevanion. She had caught something of that fine poise of the head, something of the grace, which distinguished her mistress; but whereas Mrs. Trevanion wasbeautiful, Jane was a plain woman, with somewhat small eyes, a wide mouth, and features that were not worth considering. She was of a constant paleness and she was marked with smallpox, neither of which are embellishing. Still, if you happened to walk behind her along one of the long passages, dressed in one of Madam’s old gowns, it was quite possible that you might take her for Madam. And Jane was not a common lady’s maid. She was entirely devoted to her mistress, not only to her service, but to her person, living like her shadow—always in her rooms, always with her, sharing in everything she did, even in the nursing of Mr. Trevanion, who tolerated her presence as he tolerated that of no one else. Jane sat, indeed, with the upper servants at their luxurious and comfortable table, but she did not live with them. She had nothing to do with their amusements, their constant commentary upon the family. One or two butlers in succession—for before Mr. Trevanion gave up all active interference in the house there had been a great many changes in butlers—had done their best to make themselves agreeable to Jane; but though she was always civil, she was cold, they said, as any fish, and no progress was possible. Mrs. Jennings, the cook and housekeeper, instinctively mistrusted the quiet woman. She was a deal too much with her lady that astute person said. That was deserting her own side: for do not the masters form one faction and the servants another? The struggle of life may be conducted on more or less honorable terms, but still a servant who does not belong to his own sphere is unnatural, just as a master is who throws himself into the atmosphere of the servants’ hall. The domestics felt sure that such a particular union between the mistress and the maid could not exist in the ordinary course of affairs, and that it must mean something which was not altogether right. Jane never came, save for her meals, to the housekeeper’s room. She was always up-stairs, in case, she said, that she should be wanted. Why should she be wanted more than any other person in her position? When now andthen Mrs. Trevanion, wearied out with watching and suffering, hurried to her room to rest, or to bathe her aching forehead, or perhaps even to lighten the oppression of her heart by a few tears, Jane was always there to soothe and tend and sympathize. The other servants knew as well as Jane how much Madam had to put up with, but yet they thought it very peculiar that a servant should be so much in her mistress’s confidence. There was a mystery in it. It had been suspected at first that Jane was a poor relation of Madam’s; and the others expected jealously that this woman would be set over their heads, and themselves humiliated under her sway. But this never took place, and the household changed as most households change, and one set of maids and men succeeded each other without any change in Jane. There remained a tradition in the house that she was a sort of traitor in the camp, a servant who was not of her own faction, but on the master’s side; but this was all that survived of the original prejudice, and no one now expected to be put under the domination of Jane, or regarded her with the angry suspicion of the beginning, or supposed her to be Madam’s relation. Jane, like Madam, had become an institution, and the present generation of servants did not inquire too closely into matters of history.
This was true of all save one. But there was one person in the house who was as much an institution as Jane, or even as Jane’s mistress, with whom nobody interfered, and whom it was impossible to think of as dethroned or put aside from her supreme place. Russell was in the nursery what Madam herself was in Highcourt. In that limited but influential domain she was the mistress, and feared nobody. She had been the chosen of the first Mrs. Trevanion, and the nurse of Rosalind, with whom she had gone to her Aunt Sophy’s during Mr. Trevanion’s widowhood, and in charge of whom she had returned to Highcourt when he married. Russell knew very well that the estates were entailed and that Rosalind could not be the heir, but yet she resented the second marriage as if it hadbeen a wrong done at once to herself and her charge. If Jane was of Madam’s faction, Russell was of a faction most strenuously and sternly antagonistic to Madam. The prejudice which had risen up against the lady who came from abroad, and whom nobody knew, and which had died away in the course of time, lived and survived in this woman with all the force of the first day. She had been on the watch all these years to find out something to the discredit of her mistress, and no doubt the sentiment had been strengthened by the existence of Jane, who was a sort of rival power in her own sphere, and lessened her own importance by being as considerable a person as herself. Russell had watched these two women with a hostile vigilance which never slackened. She was in her own department the most admirable and trustworthy of servants, and when she received Mrs. Trevanion’s babies into her charge, carried nothing of her prejudice against their mother into her treatment of them. If not as dear to her as her first charge, Rosalind, they were still her children, Trevanions, quite separated in her mind from the idea of their mother. Perhaps the influence of Russell accounted for certain small griefs which Madam had to bear as one of the consequences of her constant attendance on her husband, the indifference to her of her little children in their earlier years. But she said to herself with a wonderful philosophy that she could expect no less; that absorbed as she was in her husband’s sick-room all day, it was not to be expected that the chance moments she could give to the nursery would secure the easily diverted regard of the babies, to whom their nurse was the principal figure in earth and heaven. And that nurse was so good, so careful, so devoted, that it would have been selfishness indeed to have deprived the children of her care because of a personal grievance of this kind. “Why should Russell dislike me so much?” she would say sometimes to Rosalind, who tried to deny the charge, and Jane, who shook her head and could not explain. “Oh, dear mamma, it is only her temper. She does not mean it,” Rosalind would say. AndMadam, who had so much to suffer from temper in another quarter, did not reject the explanation. “Temper explains a great many things,” she said, “but even that does not quite explain. She is so good to the children and hates their mother. I feel I have a foe in the house so long as she is here.” Rosalind had a certain love for her nurse, notwithstanding her disapproval of her, and she looked up with some alarm. “Do you mean to send her away?”
“Miss Rosalind,” said Jane, “my lady is right. It is a foe and nothing less, a real enemy she has in that woman; if she would send Russell away I’d be very glad for one.”
“You need not fear, my love,” Madam said. “Hush, Jane, if she is my foe, you are my partisan. I will never send Russell away, Rosalind; but when the children are grown up, if I live to see it, or if she would be so kind as to marry, and go off in a happy way, or even if whenyouare married she preferred to go with you— I think I should draw my breath more freely. It is painful to be under a hostile eye.”
“The nurse’s eye, mamma, and you the mistress of the house!”
“It does not matter, my dear. I have always had a sympathy for Haman, who could not enjoy his grandeur for thinking of that Jew in the gate that was always looking at him so cynically. It gets unendurable sometimes. You must have a very high opinion of yourself to get over the low view taken of you by that sceptic sitting in the gate. But now I must go to your father,” Mrs. Trevanion said. She had come up-stairs with a headache, and had sat down by the open window to get a little air, though the air was intensely cold and damp. It was a refreshment, after the closeness of the room in which the invalid sat with an unvarying temperature and every draught shut out. Rosalind stood behind her mother’s chair with her hands upon Mrs. Trevanion’s shoulders, and the tired woman leaned back upon the girl’s young bosom so full of life. “But you will catch cold at the window, my Rose! No, it does megood, I want a little air, but it is too cold for you. And now I must go back to your father,” she said, rising. She stooped and kissed the cheek of the girl she loved, and went away with a smile to her martyrdom. These moments of withdrawal from her heavy duties were the consolations of her life.
“Miss Rosalind,” said Jane, “that you should love your old nurse I don’t say a word against it—but if ever there is a time when a blow can be struck at my lady that woman will do it. She will never let the little ones be here when their mamma can see them. They’re having their sleep, or they’re out walking, or they’re at their lessons; and Miss Sophy the same. And if ever she can do us an ill turn—”
“How could she do you an ill turn? That is, Jane, I beg your pardon, she might, perhaps, be nasty toyou—but, mamma! What blow, as you call it, can be struck at mamma?”
“Oh, how can I tell?” said Jane; “I never was clever; there’s things happening every day that no one can foresee; and when a woman is always watching to spy out any crevice, you never can tell, Miss Rosalind, in this world of trouble, what may happen unforeseen.”
This speech made no great impression on Rosalind’s mind at the time, but it recurred to her after, and gave her more trouble than any wickedness of Russell’s had power to do. In the meantime, leaving Jane, she went to the nursery, and with the preoccupation of youth carried with her the same subject, heedless and unthinking what conclusions Russell, whose faculties were always alert on this question, might draw.
“Russell,” she said, after a moment, “why are you always so disagreeable to mamma?”
“Miss Rosalind, I do hate to hear you call her mamma. Why don’t you say ‘my stepmother,’ as any other young lady would in your place?”
“Because she is not my stepmother,” said the girl, with a slight stamp on the floor. “Just look at little Johnny, taking in all you say with his big eyes. She is all the mother Ihave ever known, and I love her better than any one in the world.”
“And just for that I can’t bear it,” cried the woman. “What would your own dear mamma say?”
“If she were as jealous and ill-tempered as you I should not mind what she said,” said the girl. “Don’t think, if you continue like this, you will ever have any sympathy from me.”
“Oh, Miss Rosalind, what you are saying is as bad as swearing; worse, it’s blasphemy; and the time will come when you’ll remember and be sorry. No, though you think I’m a brute, I sha’n’t say anything before the children. But the time will come—”
“What a pity you are not on the stage, Russell! You would make a fine Meg Merrilies, or something of that kind; the old woman that is always cursing somebody and prophesying trouble. That is just what you are suited for. I will come and see you your first night.”
“Me! on the stage!” cried Russell, with a sense of outraged dignity which words cannot express. Such an insult had never been offered to her before. Rosalind went out of the room quickly, angry but laughing when she had given this blow. She wanted to administer a stinging chastisement, and she had done so. Her own cleverness in discovering what would hit hardest pleased her. She began to sing, out of wrathful indignation and pleasure, as she went down-stairs.
“Me! on the stage!” Russell repeated to herself. A respectable upper servant in a great house could not have had a more degrading suggestion made to her. She could have cried as she sat there gnashing her teeth. And this too was all on account of Madam, the strange woman who had taken her first mistress’s place even in the heart of her own child. Perhaps if Rosalind had treated her stepmother as a stepmother ought to be treated, Russell would have been less antagonistic; but Mrs. Trevanion altogether was obnoxious to her. She had come from abroad; she had brought her own maid with her, who wasentirely unsociable, and never told anything; who was a stranger, a foreigner perhaps, for anything that was known of her, and yet was Russell’s equal, or more, by right of Madam’s favor, though Russell had been in the house for years. What subtle antipathy there might be besides these tangible reasons for hating them, Russell did not know. She only knew that from the first moment she had set eyes upon her master’s new wife she had detested her. There was something about her that was not like other women. There must be a secret. When had it ever been known that a maid gave up everything—the chat, the game at cards, the summer stroll in the park, even the elegant civilities of a handsome butler—for the love of her mistress? It was unnatural; no one had ever heard of such a thing. What could it be but a secret between these women which held them together, which it was their interest to conceal from the world? But the time would come, Russell said to herself. If she watched night and day she should find it out; if she waited for years and years the time and opportunity would come at last.
Thisconversation, or series of conversations, took place shortly before the time at which this history begins, and it was very soon after that the strange course of circumstances commenced which was of so much importance in the future life of the Trevanions of Highcourt. When the precise moment was at which the attention of Rosalind was roused and her curiosity excited, she herself could not have told. It was not until Madam Trevanion had fallen for some time into the singular habit of disappearing after dinner, nobody knew where. It had been very usual with her to run up to the nursery when she left the dining-room, to see if the children were asleep. Mr. Trevanion, when he was at all well, liked to sit, if not over his wine, for he was abstemious by force of necessity, yet at the table, talkingwith whomsoever might be his guest. Though his life was so little adapted to the habits of hospitality, he liked to have some one with whom he could sit and talk after dinner, and who would make up his rubber when he went into the drawing-room. He had been tolerably well, for him, during the autumn, and there had been a succession of three-days’ visitors, all men, succeeding each other, and all chosen on purpose to serve Mr. Trevanion’s after-dinner talk and his evening rubber. And it was a moment in which the women of the household felt themselves free. As for Rosalind, she would establish herself between the lamp and the fire and read a novel, which was one of her favorite pastimes; while Mrs. Trevanion, relieved from the constant strain of attendance, would run up-stairs, “to look at the children,” as she said. Perhaps she did not always look long at the children, but this served as the pretext for a moment of much-needed rest, Rosalind had vaguely perceived a sort of excitement about her for some time—a furtive look, an anxiety to get away from the table as early as possible. While she sat there she would change color, as was not at all her habit, for ordinarily she was pale. Now flushes and pallor contended with each other. When she spoke there was a little catch as of haste and breathlessness in her voice, and when she made the usual little signal to Rosalind her hand would tremble, and the smile was very uncertain on her lip. Nor did she stop to say anything, but hurried up-stairs like one who has not a moment to lose. And it happened on several occasions that Mr. Trevanion and the guest and the doctor were in the drawing-room, however long they sat, before Madam had returned. For some time Rosalind took no notice of this. She did not indeed remark it. It had never occurred to her to watch or to inspect her stepmother’s conduct. Hitherto she had been convinced that it was right always. She read her novel in her fireside corner, and never discovered that there was any break in the usual routine. When the first painful light burst upon her she could not tell. It was first a word from Russell, then the sightof Jane gazing out very anxiously upon the night, when it rained, from a large staircase window, and then the aspect of affairs altogether. Mr. Trevanion began to remark very querulously on his wife’s absence. Where was she? What did she mean by always being out of the way just when he wanted her? and much more of the same kind. And when Madam came in she looked flushed and hurried, and brought with her a whole atmosphere of fresh out-door air from the damp and somewhat chilly night. It was the fragrance and sensation of this fresh air which roused Rosalind the most. It startled her with a sense of something that was new, something that she did not understand. The thought occurred to her next morning when she first opened her eyes, the first thing that came into her mind. That sudden gush of fresh air, how did it come? It was not from the nursery that one could bring an atmosphere like that.
And thus other days and other evenings passed. There was something new altogether in Mrs. Trevanion’s face, a sort of awakening, but not to happiness. When they drove out she was very silent, and her eyes were watchful as though looking for something. They went far before the carriage, before the rapid horses, with a watchful look. For whom could she be looking? Rosalind ventured one day to put the question. “For whom—could I be looking? I am looking for no one,” Mrs. Trevanion said, with a sudden rush of color to her face; and whereas she had been leaning forward in the carriage, she suddenly leaned back and took no more notice, scarcely speaking again till they returned home. Such caprice was not like Madam. She did everything as usual, fulfilled all her duties, paid her calls, and was quite as lively and interested as usual in the neighbors whom she visited, entering into their talk almost more than was her habit. But when she returned to the society of her own family she was not as usual. Sometimes there was a pathetic tone in her voice, and she would excuse herself in a way which brought the tears to Rosalind’s eyes.
“My dear,” she would say, “I fear I am bad company at present. I have a great deal to think of.”
“You are always the best of company,” Rosalind would say in the enthusiasm of her affection, and Mrs. Trevanion looked at her with a tender gratitude which broke the girl’s heart.
“When I want people to hear the best that can be said of me, I will send them to you, Rosalind,” she said. “Oh, what a blessing of God that you should be the one to think most well of me! God send it may always be so!” she added, with a voice full of feeling so deep and anxious that the girl did not know what to think.
“How can you speak so, mamma? Think well! Why, you are my mother; there is nobody but you,” she said.
“Do you know, Rosalind,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “that the children who are my very own will not take me for granted like you.”
“And am not I your very own? Whom have I but you?” Rosalind said.
Mrs. Trevanion turned and kissed her, though it was in the public road. Rosalind felt that her cheek was wet. What was the meaning of it? They had always been mother and daughter in the fullest sense of the word, unconsciously, without any remark, the one claiming nothing, the other not saying a word of her devotion. It was already a painful novelty that it should be mentioned between them how much they loved each other, for natural love like this has no need of words.
And then sometimes Madam would be severe.
“Mamma,” said little Sophy on one of these drives, “there is somebody new living in the village—a gentleman—well, perhaps not a gentleman. Russell says nobody knows who he is. And he gets up in the middle of the day, and goes out at night.”
“I should not think it could be any concern of yours who was living in the village,” Mrs. Trevanion said, far more hastily and hotly than her wont.
“Oh, but mamma, it is so seldom any one comes; and he lives at the Red Lion; and it is too late for sketching, so he can’t be an artist; and, mamma, Russell says—”
“I will not have Russell fill your head with the gossip of the village,” said Madam, with a flush of anger. “You are too much disposed to talk about your neighbors. Tell Russell I desire you to have nothing to do with the village news—”
“Oh, but mamma, it isn’t village news, it’s a stranger. Everybody wants to find out about a stranger; and he is so—”
Mrs. Trevanion gave a slight stamp of impatience and anger. “You have still less to do with strangers. Let me hear no more about this,” she said. She did not recover from the thrill of irritation during the whole course of the drive. Sophy, who was unused to such vehemence, retired into sulkiness and tears, while Rosalind, wounded a little to see that her mother was fallible, looked on, surprised. She who was never put out! And then again Madam Trevanion came down from her eminence and made a sort of excuse which troubled her young adorer almost more than the fact. “I am afraid I am growing irritable. I have so much to think of,” she said.
What was it she had to think of now above other times? Mr. Trevanion, for him, was well. They had people staying in the house who amused him; and John Trevanion was coming, Uncle John, whom everybody liked. And the children were all well; and nothing wrong, so far as any one was aware, in the business matters which Mrs. Trevanion bore the weight of to serve her husband; the farms were all let, there was nothing out of gear anywhere. What had she to think of? Rosalind was greatly, painfully puzzled by this repeated statement. And by degrees her perplexity grew. It got into the air, and seemed to infect all the members of the household. The servants acquired a watchful air. The footman who came in to take away the teacups looked terribly conscious that Madam was late. There was a general watchfulness about. You could not cross the hall, or go up-stairs, or go through a corridor from one partof the house to another, without meeting a servant who would murmur an apology, as if his or her appearance was an accident, but who were all far too wide awake and on the alert to have come there accidentally. Anxiety of this kind, or even curiosity, is cumulative, and communicates itself imperceptibly with greater and greater force as it goes on. And in the midst of the general drama a curious side-scene was going on always between the two great antagonists in the household—Russell and Jane. They kept up a watch, each on her side. The one could not open her door or appear upon the upper stairs without a corresponding click of the door of the other; a stealthy inspection behind a pillar, or out of a corner, to see what was going on; and both of them had expeditions of their own which would not bear explanation, both in the house and without. In this point Jane had a great advantage over her adversary. She could go out almost when she pleased, while Russell was restrained by the children, whom she could not leave. But Russell had other privileges that made up for this. She had nursery-maids under her orders; she had spies about in all sorts of places; her relations lived in the village. Every piece of news, every guess and suspicion, was brought to her. And she had a great faculty for joining her bits of information together. By and by Russell began to wear a triumphant look, and Jane a jaded and worn one; they betrayed in their faces the fact that whatever their secret struggle was, one was getting the better of the other. Jane gave Rosalind pathetic looks, as if asking whether she might confide in her, while Russell uttered hints and innuendoes, ending, indeed, as has been seen, in intimations more positive. When she spoke so to Rosalind it may be supposed that she was not silent to the rest of the house; or that she failed, with the boldness of her kind, to set forth and explain the motives of her mistress. For some time before the incident of the bramble, every one in the house had come to be fully aware that Madam went out every evening, however cold, wet, and miserable it might be. John Trevanionacquired the knowledge he could not tell how; he thought it was from that atmosphere of fresh air which unawares she brought with her on those occasions when she was late, when the gentlemen had reached the drawing-room before she came in. This was not always the case. Sometimes they found her there, seated in her usual place, calm enough, save for a searching disquiet in her eyes, which seemed to meet them as they came in, asking what they divined or knew. They all knew—that is to say, all but Mr. Trevanion himself, whose vituperations required no particular occasion, and ran on much the same whatever happened, and the temporary three-days’ guest, who at the special moment referred to was young Hamerton. Sometimes incidents would occur which had no evident bearing upon this curious secret which everybody knew, but yet nevertheless disturbed the brooding air with a possibility of explosion. On one occasion little Sophy was the occasion of a thrill in this electrical atmosphere which nobody quite understood. The child had come in to dessert, and was standing by her father’s side, consuming all the sweetmeats she could get.
“Oh, mamma!” Sophy said suddenly and loudly, addressing her mother across the table; “you know that gentleman at the Red Lion I told you about?”
“What gentleman at the Red Lion?” said her father, who had a keen ear for gossip.
“Do not encourage her, Reginald,” said Madam from the other end of the table; “I cannot let her bring the village stories here.”
“Let us hear about the gentleman from the Red Lion,” he said; “perhaps it is something amusing. I never am allowed to hear what is going on. Come, Sophy, what’s about him? We all want to know.”
“Oh, but mamma will be so cross if I tell you! She will not let me say a word. When I told her before she stamped her foot—”
“Ha, Madam!” said the husband, “we’ve caught you. Ithought you were one that never lost your temper. But Sophy knows better. Come, what of this gentleman—”
“I think, Rosalind, we had better go,” said Mrs. Trevanion, rising. “I do not wish the child to bring tales out of the village. Sophy!” The mother looked at her with eyes of command. But the little girl felt herself the heroine of the occasion, and perfectly secure, held in her father’s arm.
“Oh, it is only that nobody knows him!” she said in her shrill little voice; “and he gets up in the middle of the day, and never goes out till night. Russell knows all about him. Russell says he is here for no good. He is like a man in a story-book, with such big eyes. Oh! Russell says she would know him anywhere, and I think so should I—”
Mrs. Trevanion stood listening till all was said. Her face was perfectly without color, her eyes blazing upon the malicious child with a strange passion. What she was doing was the most foolish thing a woman could do. Her anger succeeded by so strange a calm, the intense seriousness with which she regarded what after all was nothing more than a childish disobedience, gave the most exaggerated importance to the incident. Why should she take it so seriously, everybody asked? What was it to her? And who could hinder the people who were looking on, and knew that Madam was herself involved in something unexplainable, something entirely new to all her habits, from receiving this new actor into their minds as somehow connected with it, somehow appropriated by her? When the child stopped, her mother interfered again with the same exaggeration of feeling, her very voice thrilling the tranquillity of the room as she called Sophy to follow her. “Don’t beat her,” Mr. Trevanion called out, with a chuckling laugh. “Sophy, if they whip you, come back to me. Nobody shall whip you for answering your father. Come and tell me all you hear about the gentleman, and never mind what Madam may say.”
Sophy was frightened, however, there could be no doubt,as she followed her mother. She began to cry as she crept through the hall. Mrs. Trevanion held her head high; there was a red spot on each of her cheeks. She paused for a moment and looked at Rosalind, as if she would have spoken; then hurried away, taking no notice of the half-alarmed, half-remorseful child, who stood and gazed after her, at once relieved and disappointed. “Am I to get off?” Sophy whispered, pulling at Rosalind’s dress. And then she burst into a sudden wail of crying: “Oh, Rosalind, mamma has never said good-night!”
“You do not deserve it, after having disobeyed her,” said Rosalind. And with her young mind all confused and miserable, she went to the drawing-room to her favorite seat between the fire and the lamp; but though her novel was very interesting, she did not read it that night.
Nextday, as they drove out in the usual afternoon hour while Mr. Trevanion took his nap after luncheon, a little incident happened which was nothing, yet gave Rosalind, who was alone with her stepmother in the carriage, a curious sensation. A little way out of the village, on the side of the road, she suddenly perceived a man standing, apparently waiting till they should pass. Madam had been very silent ever since they left home, so much more silent than it was her habit to be that Rosalind feared she had done something to incur Mrs. Trevanion’s displeasure. Instead of the animated conversations they used to have, and the close consultations that were habitual between them, they sat by each other silent, scarcely exchanging a word in a mile. Rosalind was not herself a great talker, but when she was with this other and better self, she flowed forth in lively observation and remark, which was not talk, but the involuntary natural utterance which came as easily as her breath.This day, however, she had very little to say, and Madam nothing. They leaned back, each in her corner, with a blank between them, which Rosalind now and then tried to break with a wistful question as to whether mamma was cold, whether she did not find the air too keen, if she would like the carriage closed, etc., receiving a smile and a brief reply, but no more. They had fallen into silence almost absolute as they passed through the village, and it was when they emerged once more into the still country road that the incident which has been referred to took place. Some time before they came up to him, Rosalind remarked the man standing under one of the hedgerow trees, close against it, looking towards them, as if waiting for the carriage to pass. Though she was not eager for the tales of the village like Sophy, Rosalind had a country girl’s easily roused curiosity in respect to a stranger. She knew at once by the outline of him, before she could make out even what class he belonged to, that this was some one she had never seen before. As the carriage approached rapidly she grew more and more certain. He was a young man, a gentleman—at least his dress and attitude were like those of a gentleman; he was slim and straight, not like the country louts. As he turned his head towards the carriage, Rosalind thought she had never seen a more remarkable face. He was very pale; his features were large and fine, and his pallor and thinness were made more conspicuous by a pair of very large, dreamy, uncertain dark eyes. These eyes were looking so intently towards the carriage that Rosalind had almost made up her mind that there was to be some demand upon their sympathy, some petition or appeal. She could not help being stirred with all the impetuosity of her nature, frank and warm-hearted and generous, towards this poor gentleman. He looked as if he had been ill, as if he meant to throw himself upon their bounty, as if— The horses sped on with easy speed as she sat up in the carriage and prepared herself for whatever might happen. It is needless to say that nothing happened as far as the bystanderwas concerned. He looked intently at them, but did no more. Rosalind was so absorbed in a newly awakened interest that she thought of nothing else, till suddenly, turning round to her companion, she met—not her stepmother’s sympathetic countenance, but the blackness of a veil in which Mrs. Trevanion had suddenly enveloped herself. “That must surely be the gentleman Sophy was talking of,” she said. Madam gave a slight shiver in her furs. “It is very cold,” she said; “it has grown much colder since we came out.”
“Shall I tell Robert to close the carriage, mother?”
“Oh, no, it is unnecessary. You can tell him to go home by the Wildwood gate. I should not have come out if I had known it was so cold.”
“I hope you have not taken cold, mamma. To me the air seems quite soft. I suppose,” Rosalind said, in that occasional obtuseness which belongs to innocence, “you did not notice, as you put down your veil just then, that gentleman on the road? I think he must be the gentleman Sophy talked about—very pale, with large eyes. I think he must have been ill. I feel quite interested in him too.”
“No, I did not observe—”
“I wish you had noticed him, mamma. I should know him again anywhere; it is quite a remarkable face. What can he want in the village? I think you should make the doctor call, or send papa’s card. If he should be ill—”
“Rosalind, you know how much I dislike village gossip. A stranger in the inn can be nothing to us. There is Dr. Smith if he wants anything,” said Madam, hurriedly, almost under her breath. And she shivered again, and drew her furred mantle more closely round her. Though it was November, the air was soft and scarcely cold at all, Rosalind thought in her young hardiness; but then Mrs. Trevanion, shut up so much in an overheated room, naturally was more sensitive to cold.
This was in the afternoon; and on the same evening there occurred the incident of the bramble, and all the misery thatfollowed, concluding in Mr. Trevanion’s attack, and the sudden gloom and terror thrown upon the house. Rosalind had no recollection of so trifling a matter in the excitement and trouble that followed. She saw her stepmother again only in the gray of the winter morning, when waking suddenly, with that sense of some one watching her which penetrates the profoundest sleep, she found Mrs. Trevanion seated by her bedside, extremely pale, with dark lines under her eyes, and the air of exhaustion which is given by a sleepless night.
“I came to tell you, dear, that your father, at last, is getting a little sleep,” she said.
“Oh, mamma— But you have had no sleep—you have been up all night!”
“That does not much matter. I came to say also, Rosalind, that I fear my being so late last night and his impatience had a great deal to do with bringing on the attack. It might be almost considered my fault.”
“Oh, mamma! we all know,” cried Rosalind, inexpressibly touched by the air with which she spoke, “how much you have had to bear.”
“No more than what was my duty. A woman when she marries accepts all the results. She may not know what there will be to bear, but whatever it is it is all involved in the engagement. She has no right to shrink—”
There was a gravity, almost solemnity, in Madam’s voice and look which awed the girl. She seemed to be making a sort of formal and serious explanation. Rosalind had seen her give way under her husband’s cruelty and exactions. She had seen her throw herself upon the bed and weep, though there had never been a complaint in words to blame the father to the child. This was one point in which, and in which alone, the fact that Rosalind was his daughter, and not hers, had been apparent. Now there was no accusation, but something like a statement, formal and solemn, which was explained by the exhaustion and calm as of despair that was in her face.
“That has been my feeling all through,” she said. “I wish you to understand it, Rosalind. If Reginald were at home—well, he is a boy, and I could not explain to him as I can to you. I want you to understand me; I have had more to bear, a great deal more, than I expected. But I have always said to myself it was in the day’s work. You may perhaps be tempted to think, looking back, that I have had, even though he has been so dependent upon me, an irritating influence. Sometimes I have myself thought so, and that some one else— But if you will put one thing to another,” she added, going on in the passionless, melancholy argument, “you will perceive that the advantage to him of my knowledge of all his ways counter-balances any harm that might arise from that; and then there is always the doubt whether any one else would not have been equally irritating after a time.”
“Mother,” cried Rosalind, who had raised herself in her bed and was gazing anxiously into the pale and worn-out face which was turned half away from her, not looking at her; “mother! why do you say all this to me? Do I want you to explain yourself, I who know that you have been the best, the kindest—”
Mrs. Trevanion did not look at her, but put up her hand to stop this interruption.
“I am saying this because I think your father is very ill, Rosalind.”
“Worse, mamma?”
“I have myself thought that he was growing much weaker. We flattered ourselves, you know, that to be so long without an attack was a great gain; but I have felt he was growing weaker, and I see now that Dr. Beaton agrees with me. And to have been the means of bringing on this seizure when he was so little able to bear it—”
“Oh, mamma! how can you suppose that any one would ever blame—”
“I am my own judge, Rosalind. No, you would not blame me, not now at least, when you are entirely under my influence.I think, however, that had it not been this it would have been something else. Any trifling matter would have been enough. Nothing that we could have done would have staved it off much longer. That is my conviction. I have worked out the question, oh, a hundred times within myself. Would it be better to go away, and acknowledge that I could not— I was doing as much harm as good—”
Rosalind here seized upon Mrs. Trevanion’s arm, clasping it with her hands, with a cry of “Go away! leave us, mother!” in absolute astonishment and dismay.
“And so withdraw the irritation. But then with the irritation I should have deprived him of a great deal of help. And there was always the certainty that no other could do so much, and that any other would soon become an irritation too. I have argued the whole thing out again and again. And I think I am right, Rosalind. No one else could have been at his disposal night and day like his wife. And if no one but his wife could have annoyed him so much, the one must be taken with the other.”
“You frighten me, mamma; is it so very serious? And you have done nothing—nothing?”
Here Mrs. Trevanion for the first time turned and looked into Rosalind’s face.
“Yes,” she said. There was a faint smile upon her lips, so faint that it deepened rather than lightened the gravity of her look. She shook her head and looked tenderly at Rosalind with this smile. “Ah, my dear,” she said, “you would willingly make the best of it; but I have done something. Not, indeed, what he thinks, what perhaps other people think, but something I ought not to have done.” A deep sigh followed, a long breath drawn from the inmost recesses of her breast to relieve some pain or pressure there. “Something,” she continued, “that I cannot help, that, alas! I don’t want to do; although I think it is my duty, too.”
And then she was silent, sitting absorbed in her own thoughtsby Rosalind’s bed. The chilly winter morning had come in fully as she talked till now the room was full of cold daylight, ungenial, unkindly, with no pleasure in it. Rosalind in her eager youth, impatient of trouble, and feeling that something must be done or said to make an end of all misery, that it was not possible there could be no remedy, held her mother’s hand between hers, and cried and kissed it and asked a hundred questions. But Madam sat scarcely moving, her mind absorbed in a labyrinth from which she saw no way of escape. There seemed no remedy either for the ills that were apparent or those which nobody knew.
“You ought at least to be resting,” the girl said at last; “you ought to get a little sleep. I will get up and go to his room and bring you word if he stirs.”
“He will not stir for some time. No, I am not going to bed. After I have bathed my face Jane will get me a cup of tea, and I shall go down again. No, I could not sleep. I am better within call, so that if he wants me— But I could not resist the temptation of coming in to speak to you, Rosalind. I don’t know why—just an impulse. We ought not to do things by impulse, you know, but alas! some of us always do. You will remember, however, if necessary. Somehow,” she said, with a pathetic smile, her lips quivering as she turned to the girl’s eager embrace, “you seem more my own child, Rosalind, more my champion, my defender, than those who are more mine.”
“Nothing can be more yours, mother, all the more that we chose each other. We were not merely compelled to be mother and child.”
“Perhaps there is something in that,” said Mrs. Trevanion.
“And the others are so young; only I of all your children am old enough to understand you,” cried Rosalind, throwing herself into her stepmother’s arms. They held each other for a moment closely in that embrace which is above words, which is the supreme expression of human emotion and sympathy,resorted to when all words fail, and yet which explains nothing, which leaves the one as far as ever from understanding the other, from divining what is behind the veil of individuality which separates husband from wife and mother from child. Then Mrs. Trevanion rose and put Rosalind softly back upon her pillow and covered her up with maternal care as if she had been a child. “I must not have you catch cold,” she said, with a smile which was her usual motherly smile with no deeper meaning in it. “Now go to sleep, my love, for another hour.”
In her own room Madam exchanged a few words with Jane, who had also been up all night, and who was waiting for her with the tea which is a tired watcher’s solace. “You must do all for me to-day, Jane,” she said; “I cannot leave Mr. Trevanion; I will not, which is more. I have been, alas! partly the means of bringing on this attack.”