“Oh, Madam, how many attacks have there been before without any cause!”
“That is a little consolation to me; still, it is my fault. Tell him how unsafe it is to be here, how curious the village people are, and that I implore him, for my sake, if he thinks anything of that, and for God’s sake, to go away. What can we do more? Tell him what we have both told him a hundred times, Jane!”
“I will do what I can, Madam; but he pays no attention to me, as you know.”
“Nor to any one,” said Madam, with a sigh. “I have thought sometimes of telling Dr. Beaton everything; he is a kind man, he would know how to forgive. But, alas! how could I tell if it would do good or harm?”
“Harm! only harm! He would never endure it,” the other said.
Again Mrs. Trevanion sighed; how deep, deep down was the oppression which those long breaths attempted to relieve. “Oh,” she said, “how happy they are that never stray beyondthe limits of nature! Would not poverty, hard work, any privation, have been better for all of us?”
“Sixteen years ago, Madam,” Jane said.
Mr. Trevanion’sattack wore off by degrees, and by and by he resumed his old habits, appearing once more at dinner, talking as of old after that meal, coming into the drawing-room for his rubber afterwards. Everything returned into the usual routine. But there were a few divergences from the former habits of the house. The invalid was never visible except in the evening, and there was a gradual increase of precaution, a gradual limitation of what he was permitted or attempted to do, which denoted advancing weakness. John Trevanion remained, which was another sign. He had made all his arrangements to go, and then after a conversation with the doctor departed from them suddenly, and announced that if it did not interfere with any of Madam’s arrangements he would stay till Christmas, none of his engagements being pressing. Other guests came rarely, and only when the invalid burst forth into a plaint that he never saw any one, that the sight of the same faces day by day was enough to kill a man. “And every one longer than the other,” he cried. “There is John like a death’s head, and the doctor like a grinning waxwork, and Madam—why, she is the worst of all. Since I interfered with her little amusements, going out in the dark like one of her own housemaids, by Jove, Madam has been like a whipped child. She that had always an argument ready, she has taken up the submissiverôleat last. It’s a new development. Eh? don’t you think so? Did you ever see Madam in therôleof Griselda before? I never did, I can tell you. It is a change! It won’t last long, you think, John? Well, let us get the good of it while we can. It is something quite novel to me.”
“I said nothing on the subject,” said John, “and indeed I think it would be better taste to avoid personal observations.”
“Especially in the presence of the person, eh? That’s not my way. I say the worst I have to say to your face, so you need not fear what is said behind your back— Madam knows it. She is so honest; she likes honesty. A woman that has set herself to thwart and cross her husband for how many—sixteen years, she can’t be in much doubt as to his opinion of her, eh? What! will nothing make you speak?”
“It is time for this tonic, Reginald. Dr. Beaton is very anxious that you should not neglect it.”
“Is that all you have got to say? That is brilliant, certainly; quinine, when I want a little amusement. Bitter things are better than sweet, I suppose you think. In that case I should be a robust fox-hunter instead of an invalid, as I am—for I have had little else all my life.”
“I think you have done pretty well in your life, Reginald. What you have wanted you have got. That does not happen to all of us. Except health, which is a great deduction, of course.”
“What I have wanted! I wanted an heir and a family like other men, and I got a poor little wife who died at nineteen, and a useless slip of a girl. Then my second venture—perhaps you think my second venture was very successful—a fine robust wife, and a mischievous brat like Rex, always in scrapes at school, besides that little spiteful minx Sophy, who would spite her own mother if she could, and the two imps in the nursery. What good are they to me? The boy will succeed me, of course, and keep you out. I had quite as lief you had it, John. You are my own brother, after all, and that boy is more his mother’s than mine. He has those eyes of hers. Lord! what a fool a young fellow is! To imagine I should have given up so much when I ought to have known better, and taken so many burdens on my shoulders for the sake of apair of fine eyes. They are fine eyes still, but I know the meaning of them now.”
“This is simply brutal, Reginald,” said his brother, in high indignation. He got up to go away, but a sign from Mrs. Trevanion, behind her husband’s back, made him pause.
“Brutal, is it? which means true. Give me some of that eau-de-Cologne. Can’t you be quick about it? You take half an hour to cross the room. I’ve always meant to tell you about that second marriage of mine. I was a fool, and she was— Shall I tell him all about it, Madam? when we met, and how you led me on. By Jove! I have a great mind to publish the whole business, and let everybody know who you are and what you are—or, rather, were when I married you.”
“I wish you would do so, Reginald. The mystery has never been my doing. It would be for my happiness if you would tell John.”
The sick man looked round upon her with a chuckling malice. “She would like to expose herself in order to punish me,” he said. “But I sha’n’t do it; you may dismiss that from your mind. I don’t wish the country to know that my wife was—” Then he ended with a laugh which was so insulting that John Trevanion involuntarily clinched his fist and made a step forward; then recollected himself, and fell back with a suppressed exclamation.
“It is quite natural you should take her part, Jack. She’s a fine woman still of her years, though a good bit older than you would think. How old were you, Madam, when I married you? Oh, old enough for a great deal to have happened—eight-and-twenty or thereabouts—just on the edge of beingpasséethen, the more fool I! Jove! what a fool I was, thrusting my head into the bag. I don’t excuse myself. I posed myself in those days as a fellow that had seen life, and wasn’t to be taken in. But you were too many for me. Never trust to a woman, John, especially a woman that has a history and that sort of thing. You are never up to their tricks. However knowingyou may be, take my word for it, they know a thing or two more than you.”
“If you mean to do nothing but insult your wife, Reginald—”
“John, for Heaven’s sake! What does it matter? You will think no worse of me for what he says, and no better. Let him talk!” cried Madam, under her breath.
“What is she saying to you—that I am getting weak in my mind and don’t know what I am saying? Ah! that’s clever. I have always expected something of the sort. Look here, Madam! sit down at once and write to Charley Blake, do you hear? Charley—not the old fellow. Ask him to come here from Saturday to Monday, I want to have a talk with him. You are not fond of Charley Blake. And tell him to bring all his tools with him. He will know”—with a significant laugh—“what I mean.”
She went to the writing-table without a word, and wrote the note. “Will you look at it, Reginald, to see if it is what you wish.”
The patient snarled at her with his laugh. “I can trust you,” he said, “and you shall see when Blake comes.”
“What do you want with Blake, Reginald? Why should you trouble yourself with business in your present state of health? You must have done all that is necessary long ago, I wish you would keep quiet and give yourself a chance.”
“A chance! that’s Beaton’s opinion, I suppose—that I have more than a chance. That’s why you all gather round me like a set of crows, ready to pounce upon the carcass. And Madam, Madam here, can scarcely hold herself in, thinking how soon she will be free.” He pushed back his chair, and gazed from one to another with fiery eyes which seemed ready to burst from their sockets. “A chance! that’s all I’ve got, is it? You needn’t wait for it, John; there’s not a penny for you.”
“Reginald, what the doctor says is that you must be calm,that nothing must be done to bring on those spasms that shake you so. Never mind what John says; he does not know.”
“Oh, you!” cried the sick man; “you—you’ve motive enough. It’s freedom to you. I don’t tell you to scheme for it, I know that’s past praying for. Nobody can doubt it’s worth your while—a good settlement, and freedom to dance on my grave as soon as you like, as soon as you have got me into it. But John has got no motive,” he said again, with a sort of garrulous pathos; “he’ll gain nothing. He’ll rather lose something perhaps, for he couldn’t have the run of the house if it were yours, as he has done all his life. Yours!” the sick man added, with concentrated wrath and scorn; “it shall never be yours; I shall see to that. Where is the note to Charley—Charley Blake? John, take charge of it for me; see that it’s put in the post. She has the bag in her hands, and how can I tell whether she will let it go? She was a great deal too ready to write it, eh? don’t you think, knowing it was against herself?”
After this cheerful morning’s talk, which was the ordinary kind of conversation that went on in Mr. Trevanion’s room, from which John Trevanion could escape and did very shortly, but Madam could not and did not, the heavy day went on, little varied. Mrs. Trevanion appeared at lunch with a sufficiently tranquil countenance, and entered into the ordinary talk of a family party with a composure or philosophy which was a daily miracle to the rest. She checked little Sophy’s impertinences and attended to the small pair of young ones like a mother embarrassed with no cares less ignoble. There was an air of great gravity about her, but not more than the critical condition of her husband’s health made natural. And the vicar, who came in to lunch to ask after the squire, saw nothing in Madam’s manner that was not most natural and seemly. He told his wife afterwards that she took it beautifully; “Very serious, you know, very anxious, but resigned and calm.” Mrs. Vicar was of opinion that were she Mrs. Trevanion she would be morethan resigned, for everybody knew that Madam had “a great deal to put up with.” But from her own aspect no one could have told the continual flood of insult to which she was exposed, the secret anxiety that was gnawing at her heart. In the evening, before dinner, she met her brother-in-law by accident before the great fireplace in the hall. She was sitting there, thrown down in one of the deep chairs, like a worn-out creature. It was rare to see her there, though it was the common resort of the household, and so much, in spite of himself, had John Trevanion been moved by the sense of mystery about, and by his brother’s vituperations, that his first glance was one of suspicion. But his approach took her by surprise. Her face was hidden in her hands, and there was an air of abandon in her attitude and figure as if she had thrown herself, like a wounded animal, before the fire. She uncovered her face, and, he thought, furtively, hastily dried her eyes as she turned to see who was coming. Pity was strong in his heart, notwithstanding his suspicion, he came forward and looked down upon her kindly. “I am very glad,” he said, “to see that you are able to get a moment to yourself.”
“Yes,” she said, “Reginald seems more comfortable to-night.”
“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “it is beyond human patience. You ought not to have all this to bear.”
“Oh, nothing is beyond human patience,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a smile. “Never mind, I can bear it very well. After all, there is no novelty in it to wound me. I have been bearing the same sort of thing for many years.”
“And you have borne it without a murmur. You are a very wonderful woman, or—”
“What do you mean? Do you think me a bad one? It would not be wonderful after all you have heard. But I am not a bad woman, John. I am not without blame; who is? But I am not what he says. This is mere weakness to defend myself; but when one has been beaten down all day long byone perpetual flood like a hailstorm— What was that? I thought I heard Reginald’s voice.”
“It was nothing; some of the servants. I am very sorry for you, Grace. If anything can be done to ease you—”
“Nothing can be done. I think talking does him good; and what is the use of a man’s wife if not to hear everything he has to say? It diverts the evil from others, and I hope from himself too. Yes, I do think so; it is an unpleasant way of working it out, and yet I think, like the modes they adopt in surgery sometimes, it relieves the system. So let him talk,” she went on with a sigh. “It will be hard, though, if I am to lose the support of your good opinion, John.”
To this he made no direct answer, but asked, hurriedly, “What do you suppose he wants with Charley Blake? Charley specially, not his father, whom I have more faith in?”
“Something about his will, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not anything of consequence. He tries to scare me, threatening something—but it is not for that that I am afraid.”
“We shall be able to do you justice in that point. Of what are you afraid?”
She rose with a sudden impulse and stood by him in the firelight, almost as tall as he, and with a certain force of indignation in her which gave her an air of command and almost grandeur beside the man who suspected and hesitated. “Nothing!” she said, as if she flung all apprehension from her. John, whose heart had been turned from her, felt himself melting against his will. She repeated after a time, more gently, “I know that if passion can suggest anything it will be done. And he will not have time to reconsider, to let his better nature—” (here she paused, and in spite of herself a faint smile, in which there was some bitterness, passed over her face) “his better nature speak,” she said, slowly; “therefore I am prepared for everything and fear nothing.”
“This sounds not like courage, but despair.”
“And so it is. Is it wonderful that it should be despairrather than courage after all these years? I am sure there is something wrong. Listen; don’t you hear it? That is certainly Reginald’s voice.”
“No, no, you are excited. What could it be? He wants something, perhaps, and he always calls loudly for whatever he wants. It is seldom I can see you for a moment. I want to tell you that I will see Blake and find out from him—”
“I must go to Reginald, John.”
She was interrupted before she had crossed the hall by the sudden appearance of Russell, who pushed through the curtain which hung over the passage leading to Mr. Trevanion’s room, muffling herself in it in her awkwardness. The woman was scared and trembling. “Where’s Madam, Madam?” she said. “She’s wanted; oh, she’s wanted badly! He’s got a fit again.”
Mrs. Trevanion flew past the trembling woman like a shadow. “It is your doing,” she said, with a voice that rung into Russell’s heart. The intruder was entirely unhinged. “I never saw him in one before. It’s dreadful; oh, it’s dreadful! Doctor! doctor! oh, where’s the doctor?” she cried, losing all command of herself, and shrieking forth the name in a way which startled the house. The servants came running from all sides; the children, terror-stricken, half by the cry, half by the sound of Russell’s voice, so familiar to them, appeared, a succession of little wistful faces, upon the stair, while the doctor himself pushed through, startled, but with all his wits about him. “How has it happened? You’ve been carrying your ill-tempered chatter to him. I’ll have you tried for manslaughter,” the doctor said.
Rosalind Trevanionwas a girl who had never had a lover—at least, such was her own conviction. She even resented the fact a little, thinking it wonderful that when all the girls in novels possessed such interests she had none. To attain tothe mature age of eighteen, in a wealthy and well-known house where there were many visitors, and where she had all the advantages that a good position can give, without ever having received that sign of approbation which is conveyed by a declaration of love, was very strange in the point of view of fiction. And as she had few friends of her own age at hand to consult with, and an absorbing attachment and friendship for an older woman to fill up the void, novels were her chief informants as to the ordinary events of youthful life. It is an unfortunate peculiarity of these works that their almost exclusive devotion to one subject is too likely to confuse the ideas of young women in this particular. In old-fashioned English fiction, and in the latest American variety of the art, no girl who respected herself could be satisfied with less than half a dozen proposals: which is a circumstance likely to rouse painful questionings in the hearts of our young contemporaries. Here was a girl not unconscious that she was what is generally known as “a nice girl,” with everything favorable in her circumstances; and yet she had not as yet either accepted or refused anybody! It was curious. Young Hamerton, who had been staying at Highcourt at the uncomfortable moment already described, was indeed prone to seek her society, and unfolded himself rashly to her in talk, with that indescribable fatuity which young men occasionally show in presence of girls, moved perhaps by the too great readiness of the kind to laugh at their jokes and accept their lead. Rosalind, protected by her knowledge of minds more mature, looked upon Hamerton with a kind of admiring horror, to think how wonderful it was that a man should be a man, and superior to all women, and have an education such as women of ambition admired and envied, and yet be such a ——. She did not say fool, being very courteous, and unused to strong language. She only said such a ——; and naturally could no more take him into consideration as a lover than if he had been one of the footmen. It was not beyond her consciousness either, perhaps, that Charley Blake, the son and partnerof the family lawyer, whom business often brought to Highcourt, contemplated her often with his bold black eyes in a marked and unmistakable way. But that was a piece of presumption which Miss Trevanion thought of as a princess royal might regard the sighs of a courtier. Rosalind had the eclectic and varying political views held by young women of intelligence in the present time. She smiled at the old Toryism about her. She chose her men and her measures from both parties, and gave her favorites a hot but somewhat fluctuating support. She felt very sure that of all things in the world she was not an aristocrat, endeavoring to shut the gates of any exclusive world against success (which she called genius); therefore it could not be this thoroughly old-world feeling which prompted her disdain of Charley Blake. She was of opinion that a poor man of genius struggling upward towards fame was the sublimest sight on earth, and that to help in such a struggle was a far finer thing for a woman to do than to marry a duke or a prince. But no such person had ever come in her way, nor any one else so gifted, so delightful, so brilliant, and so tender as to merit the name of a lover. She was a little surprised, but referred the question to statistics, and said to herself that because of the surplus of women those sort of things did not happen nowadays: though, indeed, this was a theory somewhat invalidated by the fact that most of the young ladies in the county were married or about to be so. The position altogether did not convey any sense of humiliation to Rosalind. It gave her rather a sense of superiority, as of one who lifts her head in native worth superior to the poor appreciation of the crowd. How the sense of being overlooked should carry with it this sense of superiority is for the philosopher to say.
These thoughts belonged to the lighter and happier portion of her life, and were at present subdued by very sombre reflections. When she walked out in the morning after these events there was, however, a certain sense of emancipation in her mind.Her father had again been very ill—so ill that during the whole night the house had been on the alert, and scarcely any one had ventured to go to bed. Rosalind had spent half the night in the hall with her uncle, expecting every moment a summons to the sick-room, to what everybody believed to be the deatbed of the sufferer; and there had crept through the house a whisper, how originating no one could tell, that it was after an interview with Russell that the fit had come on, and that she had carried him some information about Madam which had almost killed him. Nobody had any doubt that it was to Madam that Russell’s report referred, and there were many wonderings and questions in the background, where the servants congregated, as to what it was. That Madam went out of nights; that she met some one in the park, and there had long and agitated interviews; that Jane knew all about it, more than any one, and could ruin her mistress if she chose to speak; but that Russell too had found out a deal, and that it had come to master’s ears through her; and full time it did, for who ever heard of goings-on like this in a gentleman’s house?—this is what was said among the servants. In superior regions nothing was said at all. Rosalind and her uncle kept together, as getting a vague comfort in the universal dreariness from being together. Now and then John Trevanion stole to the door of his brother’s room, which stood open to give all the air possible, to see or hear how things were going. One time when he did so his face was working with emotion.
“Rosalind,” he said, in the whisper which they spoke in, though had they spoken as loudly as their voices would permit no sound could have reached the sick-room; “Rosalind, I think that woman is sublime. She knows that the first thing he will do will be to harm and shame her, and yet there she is, doing everything for him. I don’t know if she is a sinner or not, but she is sublime—”
“Who are you speaking of as that woman?—ofMY MOTHER, Uncle John?” cried Rosalind, expanding and growing out ofher soft girlhood into a sort of indignant guardian angel. He shook his head impatiently and sat down; and nothing more was said between them till the middle of the night, when Dr. Beaton coming in told them the worst was over, and for the moment the sick man would “pull through.” “But I’ll have that nurse in confinement. I’ll send her to the asylum. It is just manslaughter,” he said. Russell, very pale and frightened, was at her door when Rosalind went up-stairs.
“The doctor says he will have you tried for manslaughter,” Rosalind said, as she passed her. “No, I will not say good-night. You have all but killed papa.”
“It is not I that have killed him,” said Russell; “it’s those that do what they didn’t ought to.”
Rosalind, in her excitement, stamped her foot upon the floor.
“He says you shall be sent to the asylum; and I say you shall be sent away from here. You are a bad woman. Perhaps now you will kill the children to complete your work. We are none of us safe so long as you are here.”
At this Russell gave a bitter cry and threw up her hands to heaven.
“The children,” she cried, “that I love like my own—that I give my heart’s blood for—not safe! Oh, Miss Rosalind! God forgive you!—you, that I have loved the best of all!”
“How should I forgive you?” cried Rosalind, relentless. “I will never forgive you. Hate me if you please, but never dare to say you love me. Love!—you don’t know what it is. You should go away to-night if it were I who had the power and not mamma.”
“She has the power yet. She will not have it long,” the woman cried, in her terror and passion. And she shut herself up in her room, which communicated with the children’s, and flung herself on the floor in a panic which was perhaps as tragical as any of the other sensations of this confused and miserable house.
And yet when Rosalind went out next morning she was ableto withdraw herself, in a way inconceivable to any one who has not been young and full of imaginations, from the miseries and terrors of the night. Mr. Trevanion was much exhausted, but living, and in his worn-out, feeble state required constant care and nursing, without being well enough to repay that nursing with abuse, as was his wont. Rosalind, with no one to turn to for companionship, went out and escaped. She got clear of that small, yet so important, world, tingling with emotion, with death and life in the balance, and everything that is most painful in life, and escaped altogether, as if she had possessed those wings of a dove for which we all long, into another large and free and open world, in which there was a wide, delightful air which blew in her face, and every kind of curiosity and interest and hope. How it was she fell to thinking of the curious fact that she had not, and had never had, a lover, at such a moment, who can tell? Perhaps because it occurred to her at first that it would be well to have something, somebody, to escape to and take comfort in, when she was so full of trouble, without knowing that the wide atmosphere and fresh sky and bare trees, that discharged, whenever the breath of the wind touched them, a sharp little shower of rain-drops, were enough at her age to woo her out of the misery which was not altogether personal, though she was so wound up in the lives of all the sufferers. She escaped. That thought about the lover, which was intended to be pathetic, beguiled her into a faint laugh under her breath; for indeed it was amusing, if even only ruefully amusing, to be so unlike the rest of the young world. That opened to her, as it were, the gate; and then her imagination ran on, like the lawless, sweet young rover it was, to all kinds of things amusing and wonderful. Those whose life is all to come, what a playground they have to fly into when the outside is unharmonious! how to fill up all those years; what to do in the time that is endless, that will never be done; how to meet those strange events, those new persons, those delights and wonders that are all waiting round the next and the nextcorner! If she had thought of it she would have been ashamed of herself for this very amusement, but fortunately she did not think of it, and so let herself go, like the child she was. She took her intended walk through the park, and then, as the morning was bright, after lingering at the gate a little, went out into the road, and turned to the village without any particular intention, because it was near and the red roofs shone in the light. It was a fresh, bright morning, such as sometimes breaks the dulness of November. The sky was as blue as summer, with wandering white cloudlets, and not a sign of any harm, though there had been torrents of rain the night before. Indeed, no doubt it was the pouring down of those torrents which had cleared away the tinge of darkness from the clouds, which were as innocent and filmy and light as if it had been June. Everything was glistening and gleaming with wet, but that only made the country more bright, and as Rosalind looked along the road, the sight of the red village with its smoke rising ethereal into air so pure that it was a happiness to gaze into its limpid, invisible depths, or rather heights, ending in heavens, was enough to cheer any young soul. She went on, with a little sense of adventure, for though she often went to the village, it was rare to this girl to have the privilege of being absolutely alone. The fresh air, the glistening hedgerows, the village roofs, in all the shining of the sunshine, pleased her so much that she did not see till she was close to it a break in the road, where the water which had submerged the low fields on either side had broken across the higher ground, finding a sort of channel in a slight hollow of the road. The sight of a laborer plashing through it, with but little thought, though it came up to the top of his rough boots, arrested Rosalind all at once. What was she to do?Herboots, though with the amount of high heel which only a most independent mind can escape from, were clearly quite unequal to this crossing. She could not but laugh to herself at the small matter which stopped progress, and stood on the edge of it measuring the distancewith her eye, and calculating probabilities with a smiling face, amused by the difficulty. While she stood thus she heard a voice behind her calling to the laborer in front. “Hi!” some one said; “Hallo, you there! help me to lift this log over the water, that the lady may cross.” The person appealed to turned round, and so did Rosalind. And then she felt that here was indeed an adventure. Behind her, stooping over some large logs of wood on the side of the pathway, was the man who had looked so intently at the carriage the other day when she passed with her stepmother. Before she saw his face she was sure, with a little jump of her heart, that it was the same man. He was dressed in dark tweed clothes, somewhat rough, which might have been the garb of a gentleman or of a gamekeeper, and did not fit him well, which was more like the latter than the former. She could see, as he stooped, his cheek and throat reddened as with the unusual exertion.
“Oh, please do not take the trouble,” she cried; “it is of no consequence. I have nothing to do in the village.”
“It is no trouble,” he said; and in a minute or two the logs were rolled across the side path so that she could pass. The man who had been called upon to help was one of the farm-laborers whom she knew. She thanked him cheerfully by name, and turned to the stranger, who stood with his hat off, his pale face, which she remembered to have been so pale that she thought him ill, now covered with a brilliant flush which made his eyes shine. Rosalind was startled by the beauty of the face, but it was not like that of the men she was accustomed to see. Something feminine, something delicate and weak, was in it.
“You are very kind to take so much trouble; but I am afraid you have over-exerted yourself,” she cried.
This made the young man blush more deeply still.
“I am not very strong,” he said half indignantly, “but not so weak as that.” There was a tone of petulance in the reply; and then he added, “Whatever trouble it might be is more than repaid,” with a somewhat elaborate bow.
What did it mean? The face was refined and full of expression, but then probably he was not a gentleman, Rosalind thought, and did not understand. She said hurriedly again, “I am very much obliged to you,” and went on, a little troubled by the event. She heard him make a few steps after her. Was he going to follow? In her surprise it was almost on her lips to call back William from the farm.
“I beg your pardon,” said the stranger, “but may I take the liberty of asking how is Mr. Trevanion? I heard he was worse last night.”
Rosalind turned round, half reassured.
“Oh, do you know papa?” she said. “He has been very ill all night, but he is better, though terribly exhausted. He has had some sleep this morning.”
She was elevated upon the log, which she had begun to cross, and thus looked down upon the stranger. If he knew her father, that made all the difference; and surely the face was one with which she was not unfamiliar.
“I do not know Mr. Trevanion, only one hears of him constantly in the village. I am glad he is better.”
He hesitated, as if he too was about to mount the log.
“Oh, thank you,” said Rosalind, hurrying on.
“Towhom were you talking, Rosalind?”
“To—nobody, Uncle John!” she said, in her surprise at the sudden question which came over her shoulder, and, turning round, waited till he joined her. She had changed her mind and come back after she had crossed the water upon the impromptu bridge, with a half apprehension that her new acquaintance intended to accompany her to the village, and had, to tell the truth, walked rather quickly to the park gates.
“But I met the man—a young fellow—whose appearance I don’t know.”
“Oh! I don’t know who it was either; a gentleman; at least, I suppose he was a gentleman.”
“And yet you doubt. What cause had you to doubt?”
“Well, Uncle John, his voice was nice enough, and what he said. The only thing was, he paid me a sort of a—compliment.”
“What was that?” said John Trevanion, quickly.
“Oh, nothing,” said Rosalind, inconsistently. “When I said I was sorry he had taken the trouble, he said, ‘Oh, if it was any trouble it was repaid.’ Nothing at all! Only a gentleman would not have said that to a girl who was—alone.”
“That is true; but it was not very much after all. Fashions change. A few generations ago it would have been the right thing.” Then he dropped the subject as a matter without importance, and drew his niece’s arm within his own. “Rosie,” he said, “I am afraid we shall have to face the future, you and I. What are we to do?”
“Are things so very bad, Uncle John?” she cried, and the tears came welling up into her eyes as she raised them to his face.
“Very bad, I fear. This last attack has done him a great deal of harm, more than any of the others; perhaps, because, as the doctor says, the pace is quicker as he gets near the end, perhaps because he is still as angry as ever, though he is not able to give it vent. I wonder if such fury may not have some adequate cause.”
“Oh, Uncle John!” Rosalind cried; she clasped her hands upon his arm, looking up at him through her tears. He knew what was the meaning in her tone, though it was a meaning very hard to put into words. A child cannot say of her father when he is dying that his fury has often been without any adequate cause.
“I know,” he said, “and I acknowledge that no one couldhave a more devoted nurse. But whether there have not been concealments, clandestine acts, things he has a right to find fault with—”
“Even I,” said Rosalind, hastily, “and I have nothing to hide—even I have had to make secrets from papa.”
“That is the penalty, of course, of a temper so passionate. But she should not have let you do so, Rosalind.”
“It was not she. You think everything is her fault; oh, how mistaken you are! My mother and I,” cried the girl, impetuously, “have no secrets from each other.”
John Trevanion looked into the young, ingenuous countenance with anxiety: “Then, Rosalind,” he said, “where is it that she goes? Why does she go out at that hour of all others, in the dark? Whom does she meet? If you know all this, I think there cannot be another word to say; for nothing that is not innocent would be intrusted to you.”
Rosalind was silent. She ceased to look at him, and even withdrew her clasping hands from his arm.
“You have nothing to say? There it is: she has no secrets from you, and yet you can throw no light on this one secret. I have always had a great admiration and respect for your stepmother, Rosalind.”
“I wish you would not call her my stepmother! It hurts me. What other mother have I ever known?”
“My dear, your love for her is a defence in itself. But, Rosalind, forgive me, there is some complication here. If she will not explain, what are we to do? A mystery is always a sign of something wrong; at least, it must be taken for something wrong if it remains unexplained. I am, I hope, without passion or prejudice. She might have confided in me—”
“If there was anything to confide,” Rosalind said under her breath. But he went on.
“And now your father has sent for his lawyer—to do something, to change something. I can’t tell what he means to do,but it will be trouble in any case. And you, Rosalind—I said so before, you—must not stay here.”
“If you mean that I am to leave my mother, Uncle John—”
“Hush! not your mother. My dear, you must allow others to judge for you here. Had you been her child it would have been different: but we must take thought for your best interests. Who is that driving in at the gate? Why, it is Blake already. I wonder if a second summons has been sent. He was not expected till to-morrow. This looks worse and worse, Rosalind.”
“Uncle John, if you will let me, I will run in another way. I—don’t wish to meet Mr. Blake.”
“Hallo, Rosalind! you don’t mean to say that Charley Blake has ever presumed— Ah! this comes of not having a mother’s care.”
“It is nothing of the kind,” she cried, drawing her hand violently from his arm. “He hates her because she never would— Oh, how can you be so cruel, so prejudiced, so unjust?” In her vehemence Rosalind pushed him away from her with a force which made his steady, middle-aged figure almost swerve, and darted across the park away from him just in time to make it evident to Mr. Blake, driving his dog-cart quickly to make up to the group in advance, that it was to avoid him Miss Trevanion had fled.
“How is he?” was the eager question he put as he came up to John Trevanion. “I hope I am not too late.”
“For what? If it is my brother you mean, I hear he is a little better,” said John, coldly.
“Then I suppose it is only one of his attacks,” the new-comer said, with a slight tone of disappointment; not that he had any interest in the death of Mr. Trevanion, but that the fall from the excitement of a great crisis to the level of the ordinary is always disagreeable. “I thought from the telegram this morning there was no time to lose.”
“Who sent you the telegram this morning?”
“Madam Trevanion, of course,” said the young man.
This reply took John Trevanion so much by surprise that he went on without a word.
She knew very well what Blake’s visit portended to herself. But what a strange, philosophical stoic was this woman, who did not hesitate herself to summon, to hasten, lest he should lose the moment in which she could still be injured, the executioner of her fate. A sort of awe came over John. He begun to blame himself for his miserable doubts of such a woman. There was something in this silent impassioned performance of everything demanded from her that impressed the imagination. After a few minutes’ slow pacing along, restraining his horse, Blake threw the reins to his groom, and, jumping down, walked on by John Trevanion’s side.
“I suppose there is no such alarming hurry, then,” he said. “Of course you know what’s up now?”
“If you mean what are my brother’s intentions, I know nothing about them,” John said.
“No more do I. I can’t think what he’s got in his mind; though we have been very confidential over it all.” Mr. Blake elder was an old-fashioned and polite old gentleman, but his son belonged to another world, and pushed his way by means of a good deal of assurance and no regard to any one’s feelings. “It would be a great assistance to me,” he said, “if he’s going to tamper with that will again, to know how the land lies. What is wrong? There must have been, by all I hear, a great flare-up.”
“Will you remember, Blake, that you are speaking of my brother’s affairs? We are not in the habit of having flares-up here.”
“I mean no offence,” said the other. “It’s a lie, then, that is flying about the country.”
“What is flying about the country? If it is about a flare-up you may be sure it is a lie.”
“I don’t stand upon the word,” said Blake. “I thought Imight speak frankly to you. Rumors are flying everywhere—that Mr. Trevanion is out of one fit into another—dying of it—and that Madam—”
“What of Madam?” said John Trevanion, firmly.
“I have myself the greatest respect for Mrs. Trevanion,” said the lawyer, making a sudden pause.
“You would be a bold man if you expressed any other sentiment here; but rumor has not the same reverential and perfectly just feeling, I suppose. What has it ventured to say of my sister?”
John Trevanion, with all his gravity, was very impulsive; and the sense that her secret, whatever it was, had been betrayed, bound him at once to her defence. He had probably never called her his sister before.
“Of course it is all talk,” said Blake. “I dare say the story means nothing; but knowing as I do so much about the state of affairs generally—a lawyer, you know, like a doctor, and people used to say a clergyman—”
“Is bound to hold his tongue, is he not?” John Trevanion said.
“Oh, as for that, a member of the family is not like a stranger. I took it for granted you would naturally be on the injured husband’s side.”
“Mr. Blake,” said John, “you make assumptions which would be intolerable even to a stranger, and to a brother and friend, understanding the whole matter, I hope, a little better than you do, they are not less so, but more. Look here; a lawyer has this advantage, that he is sometimes able to calm the disordered fancy of a sick man, and put things in a better light. Take care what you do. Don’t let the last act of his life be an injustice if you can help it. Your father—if your father were here—”
“Would inspire Mr. John Trevanion with more confidence,” said the other, with a suppressed sneer. “It is unfortunate, but that is not your brother’s opinion. He has preferred the younger man, as some do.”
“I hope you will justify his choice,” said John Trevanion, gravely. “It is a great responsibility. To make serious changes in a moment of passion is always dangerous—and, remember, my brother will in all probability have no time to repent.”
“The responsibility will be Mr. Trevanion’s, not mine,” said Blake. “You should warn him, not me. His brother must have more constant access to him than even his family lawyer, and is in a better position. I am here to execute his wishes; that is all that I have to do with it.”
John Trevanion bowed without a word. It was true enough. The elder Blake would perhaps have been of still less use in stemming the passionate tide of the sick man’s fury, but at least he would have struggled against it. They walked up to the house almost without exchanging another word. In the hall they were met by Madam Trevanion, upon whom the constant watching had begun to tell. Her eyes were red, and there were deep lines under them. All the lines of her face were drawn and haggard. She met the new-comer with an anxious welcome, as if he had been a messenger of good and not of evil.
“I am very glad you have come, Mr. Blake. Thank you for being so prompt. My husband perhaps, after he has seen you, will be calmer and able to rest. Will you come to his room at once?”
If he had been about to secure her a fortune she could not have been more anxious to introduce him. She came back to the hall after she had led him to Mr. Trevanion’s room.
“I am restless,” she said; “I cannot be still. Do you know, for the first time he has sent me away. He will not have me with him. Before, whatever he might have against me was forgotten when he needed me. God grant that this interview he is so anxious for may compose him and put things on their old footing.”
Perhaps it was only her agitation and distress, but as shespoke the tears came and choked her voice. John Trevanion came up to her, and laying his hands upon her shoulders gazed into her face.
“Grace,” he said, “is it possible that you can be sincere?”
“Sincere!” she cried, looking at him with a strange incomprehension. She had no room in her mind for metaphysical questions, and she was impatient of them at such a crisis of fate.
“Yes, sincere. You know that man has come for some evil purpose. Whatever they say or do together it will be to your hurt, you know; and yet you hasten his coming, and tell him you are glad when he arrives—”
“And you think it must be false? No, it is not false, John,” she said, with a faint smile. “So long as he does it and gets it off his mind, what is it to me? Do you know that he is perhaps dying? I have nursed him and been the only one that he would have near him for years. Do you think I care what happens after? But I cannot bear to be put out of my own place now.”
“Your own place! to bear all his caprices and abuse!”
“My own place, by my husband’s bedside,” she said with tears. “When he has done whatever he wants to do his mind will be relieved. And I can do more for him than any one. He shortens his own life when he sends me away.”
Thehouse was in a curious commotion up-stairs. The nursery apartments were at the end of a passage, but on the same level with those of Mrs. Trevanion, in which Jane, Madam’s attendant and anxious maid, was watching—coming out now and then to listen, or standing within the shelter of the half-closed door. Mrs. Trevanion’s room opened into the gallery to which the great staircase led, and from which you could look down into the hall. The nursery was at the end of along passage, and, when the door was open, commanded also a view of the gallery. There many an evening when there was fine company at Highcourt had the children pressed to see the beautiful ladies coming out in their jewels and finery, dressed for dinner. The spectacle now was not so imposing, but Russell, seated near the door, watched it with concentrated interest. She was waiting too to see what would happen, with excitement indescribable and some terror and sense of guilt. Sometimes Jane would do nothing more than open her mistress’s door, and wait within for any sound or sight that might be possible. Sometimes she would step out with a furtive, noiseless step upon the gallery, and cast a quick look round and below into the hall, then return again noiselessly. Russell watched all these evidences of an anxiety as intense as her own with a sense of relief and encouragement. Jane was as eager as she was, watching over her mistress. Why was she thus watching? If Madam had been blameless, was it likely that any one would be on the alert like this? Russell herself was very sure of her facts. She had collected them with the care which hatred takes to verify its accusations; and yet cold doubts would trouble her, and she was relieved to see her opponent, the devoted adherent of the woman whose well-being was at stake, in a state of so much perturbation and anxiety. It was another proof, more potent than any of the rest. The passage which led to Russell’s domain was badly lighted, and she could not be seen as she sat there at her post like a spy. She watched with an intense passion which concentrated all her thoughts. When she heard the faint little jar of the door she brightened involuntarily. The figure of Jane—slim, dark, noiseless—standing out upon the gallery was comfort to her very soul. The children were playing near. Sophy, perched up at the table, was cutting out pictures from a number of illustrated papers and pasting them into a book, an occupation which absorbed her. The two younger children were on the floor, where they went on with their play, babbling to eachother, conscious of nothing else. It had begun to rain, and they were kept indoors perforce. A more peaceful scene could not be. The fire, surrounded by the high nursery fender, burned warmly and brightly. In the background, at a window which looked out upon the park, the nursery-maid—a still figure, like a piece of still life but for the measured movement of her hand—sat sewing. The little ones interchanged their eager little volleys of talk. They were “pretending to be” some of the actors in the bigger drama of life that went on over their heads. But their little performance was only Comedy, and it was Tragedy incarnate, with hands trembling too much to knit the little sock which she held, with dry lips parted with excitement, eyes feverish and shining, and an impassioned sense of power, of panic, and of guilt, that sat close to them in her cap and apron at the open door.
When Rosalind’s figure flitted across the vacant scene, which was like the stage of a theatre to Russell, her first impulse was to start up and secure this visitor from the still more important field of battle below, so as to procure the last intelligence how things were going; and it was with a deepened sense of hostility, despite, and excitement that she now saw her approached by the rival watcher. Jane arrested the young lady on her way to her room, and they had an anxious conversation, during which first one and then both approached the railing of the gallery and looked over. It was all that the woman could do to restrain herself. What were they looking at? What was going on? It is seldom that any ordinary human creature has the consciousness of having set such tremendous forces in motion. It might involve ruin to her mistress, death to her master. The children whom she loved might be orphaned by her hand. But she was not conscious of anything deeper than a latent, and not painful, though exciting, thrill of guilt, and she was very conscious of the exultation of feeling herself an important party in all that was going on. What had she done? Nothing but her duty. She hadwarned a man who was being deceived; she had exposed a woman who had always kept so fair an appearance, but whom she, more clear-sighted than any one, had suspected from the first. Was she not right in every point, doing her duty to Mr. Trevanion and the house that had sheltered her so long? Was not she indeed the benefactor of the house, preserving it from shame and injury? So she said to herself, justifying her own actions with an excitement which betrayed a doubt; and in the meantime awaiting the result with passionate eagerness, incapable of a thought that did not turn round this centre— What was to happen? Was there an earthquake, a terrible explosion, about to burst forth? The stillness was ominous and dreadful to the watching woman who had put all these powers in motion. She feared yet longed for the first sound of the coming outburst; and yet all the while had a savage exultation in her heart in the thought of having been able to bring the whole world about her to such a crisis of fate.
Jane in the meantime had stopped Rosalind, who was breathless with her run across the park. The woman was much agitated and trembling. “Miss Rosalind,” she said, with pale lips, “is there something wrong? I see Madam in the hall; she is not with master, and he so ill. Oh! what is wrong—what is wrong?”
“I don’t know, Jane; nothing, I hope. Papa is perhaps asleep, and there is some one— Mr. Blake—come to see him. My mother is waiting till he is gone.”
“Oh! that is perhaps why she is there,” said Jane, with relief; then she caught the girl timidly by the arm. “You will forgive me, Miss Rosalind; she has enemies—there are some who would leave nothing undone to harm her.”
“To harm mamma!” said Rosalind, holding her head high; “you forget yourself, Jane. Who would harm her in this house?”
Jane gave the girl a look which was full of gratitude, yet of miserable apprehension. “You will always be true to her,Miss Rosalind,” she said; “and oh, you have reason, for she has been a good mother to you.”
Rosalind looked at the woman somewhat sternly, for she was proud in her way. “If I did not know how fond you are of mamma,” she said, “I should be angry. Does any one ever talk so of mother and daughter? That is all a matter of course; both that she is the best mother in the world, and that I am part of herself.”
Upon this Jane did what an Englishwoman is very slow to do. She got hold of Rosalind’s hand, and made a struggle to kiss it, with tears. “Oh, Miss Rosalind, God bless you! I’d rather hear that than have a fortune left me,” she cried. “And my poor lady will want it all; she will want it all!”
“Don’t be silly, Jane. My mother wants nothing but that we should have a little sense. What can any one do against her, unless it is you and the rest annoying her by foolish anxiety about nothing. Indeed, papa is very ill, and there is reason enough to be anxious,” the girl added, after a pause.
In the meantime Madam Trevanion sat alone in the hall below. She received Blake, when he arrived, as we have seen, and she had a brief conversation with her brother-in-law, which agitated her a little. But when he left her, himself much agitated and not knowing what to think, she sat down again and waited, alone and unoccupied; a thing that scarcely ever in her full life happened to her. She, too, felt the stillness before the tempest. It repeated itself in her mind in a strange, fatal calm, a sort of cessation of all emotion. She had said to John Trevanion that she did not care what came after; and she did not; yet the sense that something was being done which would seriously affect her future life, even though she was not susceptible of much feeling on the subject, made the moment impressive. Calm and strong, indeed, must the nerves be of one who can wait outside the closed door of a room in which her fate is being decided, without a thrill. But a sort of false tranquillity—or was it perhaps the calmest of all moods, the stillness ofdespair?—came on her as she waited. There is a despair which is passion, and raves; but there is a different kind of despair, not called forth by any great practical danger, but by a sense of the impossibilities of life, the powerlessness of human thought or action, which is very still and says little. The Byronic desperation is very different from that which comes into the heart of a woman when she stands still amid the irreconcilable forces of existence and feels herself helpless amid contending wills, circumstances, powers, which she can neither harmonize nor overcome. The situation in which she stood was impossible. She saw no way out of it. The sharp sting of her present uselessness, and the sense that she had been for the first time turned away from her husband’s bedside, had given a momentary poignancy to her emotions which roused her, but as that died away she sat and looked her position in the face with a calm that was appalling. This was what she had come to at the end of seventeen years—that her position was impossible. She did not know how to turn or what step to take. On either side of her was a mind that did not comprehend and a heart that did not feel for her. She could neither touch nor convince the beings upon whom her very existence depended. Andromeda, waiting for the monster to devour her, had at least the danger approaching but from one quarter, and, on the other, always the possibility of a Perseus in shining armor to cleave the skies. But Madam had on either side of her an insatiable fate, and no help, she thought, on earth or in heaven. For there comes a moment in the experience of all who have felt very deeply, when Heaven, too, seems to fail. Praying long, with no visible reply, drains out the heart. There seems nothing more left to say even to God, no new argument to employ with him, who all the while knows better than he can be told. And there she was, still, silent in her soul as well as with her lips, waiting, with almost a sense of ease in the thought that there was nothing more to be done, not even a prayer to be said, her heart, her thoughts, her wishes, all standing arrested asbefore an impenetrable wall which stopped all effort. And how still the house was! All the doors closed, the sounds of the household lost in the distance of long passages and shut doors and curtains; nothing to disturb the stillness before the tempest should burst. She was not aware of the anxious looks of her maid, now and then peering over the balustrade of the gallery above, for Jane’s furtive footstep made no sound upon the thick carpet. Through the glass door she saw the clear blue of the sky, radiant in the wintry sunshine, but still, as wintry brightness is, without the flickers of light and shadow. And thus the morning hours went on.
A long time, it seemed a lifetime, passed before her repose was disturbed. It had gradually got to be like an habitual state, and she was startled to be called back from it. The heavy curtain was lifted, and first Mr. Blake, then Dr. Beaton, came forth. The first looked extremely grave and disturbed, as he came out with a case of papers which he had brought with him in his hand. He looked at Mrs. Trevanion with a curious, deprecating air, like that of a man who has injured another unwillingly. They had never been friends, and Madam had shown her sentiments very distinctly as to those overtures of admiration which the young lawyer had taken upon himself to make to Rosalind. The politeness he showed to her on ordinary occasions was the politeness of hostility. But now he looked at her alarmed, as if he could not support her glance, and would fain have avoided the sight of her altogether. Dr. Beaton, on the other hand, came forward briskly.
“I have just been called in to our patient,” he said, “and you are very much wanted, Mrs. Trevanion.”
“Does he want me?” she said.
“I think so—certainly. You are necessary to him; I understand your delicacy in being absent while Mr. Blake—”
“Do not deceive yourself, doctor; it was not my delicacy.”
“Come, please,” said the doctor, almost impatiently; “come at once.”
Blake stood looking after them till both disappeared behind the curtain, then drew a long breath, as if relieved by her departure. “I wonder if she has any suspicion,” he said to himself. Then he made a long pause and walked about the hall, and considered the pictures with the eye of a man who might have to look over the inventory of them for sale. Then he added to himself, “What an old devil!” half aloud. Of whom it was that he uttered this sentiment no one could tell, but it came from the bottom of his heart.
Madam did not leave the sick-chamber again that day. She did not appear at luncheon, for which perhaps the rest were thankful, as she was herself. How to look her in the face, with this mingled doubt of her and respect for her, nobody knew. Rosalind alone was disappointed. The doctor took everything into his own hands. He was now the master of the situation, and ruled everybody. “She is the best woman I ever knew,” he said, with fervor. “I would rather trust her with a case than any Sister in the land. I said to her that I thought she would do better to stay. Mr. Trevanion was very glad to get her back.”
Asso often happens when all is prepared and ready for the catastrophe, the stroke of fate was averted. That night proved better than the last, and then there passed two or three quiet days. It was even possible, the doctor thought, that the alarm might be a false one, and the patient go on, if tranquil and undisturbed, until, in the course of nature, another crisis prepared itself or external commotion accelerated nature. He had received his wife back after her few hours’ banishment with a sort of chuckling satisfaction, and though even his reduced and enfeebled state did not make him incapable of offence, the insulting remarks he addressed to her were no more than his ordinary method. Madam said nothing of them; she seemed,strangely enough, glad to return to her martyrdom. It was better, it appeared, than the sensation of being sent away. She was with him, without rest or intermission, the whole day and a great portion of the night. The two or three hours allowed her for repose were in the middle of the night, and she never stirred abroad nor tasted the fresh air through this period of confinement. The drives which had been her daily refreshment were stopped, along with every other possibility of freedom. In the meantime there appeared something like a fresh development of confidence and dependence upon her, which wrung the heart of the enemy in her stronghold, and made Russell think her work had been all in vain. Mr. Trevanion could not, it was said, bear his wife out of his sight.
It is a mistake when a dying person thus keeps all his world waiting. The sympathetic faculties are worn out. The household in general felt a slight sensation of resentment towards the sick man who had cheated them into so much interest. It was not as if he had been a man whom his dependents loved, and he had defrauded them of that profound and serious interest with which the last steps of any human creature—unless in a hospital or other agglomeration of humanity, where individual characteristics are abolished—are accompanied. The servants, who had with a little awe attended the coming of death, were half disappointed, half disgusted by the delay. Even John Trevanion, who had made up his mind very seriously and somewhat against his own convictions to wait “till all was over,” had a sensation of annoyance: he might go on for weeks, perhaps for months, all the winter—“thank God!” they said, mechanically; but John could not help thinking how inconvenient it would be to come back—to hang on all the winter, never able to go anywhere. It would have been so much more considerate to get it over at once, but Reginald was never one who considered other people’s convenience. Dr. Beaton, who had no desire to leave Highcourt, and who, besides, had a doctor’s satisfaction in a successful fight with disease, took it much morepleasantly. He rubbed his hands and expressed his hopes of “pulling” his patient through, with much unnecessary cordiality. “Let us but stave off all trouble till spring, and there is no saying what may happen,” he said, jauntily. “The summer will be all in his favor, and before next winter we may get him away.” The younger members of the family took this for granted. Reginald, who had been sent for from school, begged his mother another time to be sure there was some real need for it before summoning a fellow home in the middle of the half; and Rosalind entirely recovered her spirits. The cloud that had hung over the house seemed about to melt away. Nobody was aware of the agitating conferences which Jane held with her mistress in the few moments when they saw each other; or the miserable anxiety which contended in Madam’s mind with her evident and necessary duties. She had buried her troubles too long in her own bosom to exhibit them now. And thus the days passed slowly away; the patient had not yet been allowed to leave his bed, and, indeed, was in a state of alarming feebleness, but that was all.
Rosalind was left very much to herself during these days. She had now no longer any one to go out with. Sometimes, indeed, her uncle would propose a walk, but that at the most occupied but a small part of the day, and all her usual occupations had been suspended in the general excitement. She took to wandering about the park, where she could stray alone as much as pleased her, fearing no intrusion. A week or ten days after the visit of Mr. Blake, she was walking near the lake which was the pride of Highcourt. In summer the banks of this piece of water were a mass of flowering shrubs, and on the little artificial island in the middle was a little equally artificial cottage, the creation of Rosalind’s grandmother, where still the children in summer would often go to have tea. One or two boats lay at a little landing-place for the purpose of transporting visitors, and it was one of the pleasures of the neighborhood, when the family were absent, to visit the Bijou, as it was called. At one endof the little lake was a road leading from the village, to which the public of the place had a right. It was perhaps out of weariness with the monotony of her lonely walks that Rosalind directed her steps that way on an afternoon when all was cold and clear, an orange-red sunset preparing in the west, and indications of frost in the air. The lake caught the reflection of the sunset blaze and was all barred with crimson and gold, with the steely blue of its surface coming in around and intensifying every tint. Rosalind walked slowly round the margin of the water, and thought of the happy afternoons when the children and their mother had been rowed across, she herself and Rex taking the control of the boat. The water looked tempting, with its bars of color, and the little red roof of the Bijou blazed in the slanting light. She played with the boats at the landing-place, pushing one into the water with a half fancy to push forth into the lake, until it had got almost too far off to be pulled back again, and gave her some trouble, standing on the edge of the tiny pier with an oar in her hand, to bring it back to its little anchorage. She was standing thus, her figure relieved against the still, shining surface of the water, when she heard a footstep behind her, and thinking it the man who had charge of the cottage and the boats, called to him without turning round, “Come here, Dunmore; I have loosed this boat and I can’t get it back—”
The footstep advanced with a certain hesitation. Then an unfamiliar voice said, “I am not Dunmore—but if you will allow me to help you—”
She started and turned round. It was the same stranger whom she had already twice seen on the road. “Oh! pray don’t let me trouble you. Dunmore will be here directly,” she said.
This did not, however, prevent the young man from rendering the necessary assistance. He got into one of the nearer boats, and stretching out from the bow of it, secured the stray pinnace. It was not a dangerous act, nor even one that gavethe passer-by much trouble, but Rosalind, partly out of a sense that she had been ungracious, partly, perhaps—who can tell—out of the utter monotony of all around her, thanked him with eagerness. “I am sorry to give you trouble,” she said again.
“It is no trouble, it is a pleasure.” Was he going to be so sensible, so judicious, as to go away after this? He seemed to intend so. He put on his hat after bowing to her, and turned away, but then there seemed to be an after-thought which struck him. He turned back again, took off his hat again, and said: “I beg your pardon, but may I ask for Mr. Trevanion? The village news is so uncertain.”
“My father is still very ill,” said Rosalind, “but it is thought there is now some hope.”
“That is good news indeed,” the stranger said. Certainly he had a most interesting face. It could not be possible that a man with such a countenance was “not a gentleman,” that most damning of all sentences. His face was refined and delicate; his eyes large, liquid, full of meaning, which was increased by the air of weakness which made them larger and brighter than eyes in ordinary circumstances. And certainly it was kind of him to be glad.
“Oh, yes, you told me before you knew my father,” Rosalind said.
“I cannot claim to know Mr. Trevanion; but I do know a member of the family very well, and I have heard of him all my life.”
Rosalind was no more afraid of a young man than of an old woman, and she thought she had been unjust to this stranger, who, after all, notwithstanding his rough dress, had nothing about him to find fault with. She said, “Yes; perhaps my Uncle John? In any case I am much obliged to you, both for helping me and for your interest in papa.”
“May I sometimes ask how he is? The villagers are so vague.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Rosalind; “they have a bulletin at the lodge, or if you care to come so far as Highcourt, you will always have the last report.”
“You are very kind, I will not come to the house. But I know that you often walk in the park. If I may ask you when we—chance to meet?”
This suggestion startled Rosalind. It awoke in her again that vague alarm—not, perhaps, a gentleman. But when she looked at the eyes which were searching hers with so sensitive a perception of every shade of expression, she became confused and did not know what to think. He was so quickly sensible of every change that he saw he had taken a wrong step. He ought to have gone further, and perceived what the wrong step was, but she thought he was puzzled and did not discover this instinctively, as a gentleman would have done. She withdrew a step or two involuntarily. “Oh, no,” she said with gentle dignity, “I do not always walk the same way; but you may be sure of seeing the bulletin at the lodge.” And with this she made him a courtesy and walked away, not hurrying, to show any alarm, but taking a path which was quite out of the way of the public, and where he could not follow. Rosalind felt a little thrill of agitation in her as she went home. Who could he be, and what did he do here, and why did he throw himself in her way? If she had been a girl of a vulgarly romantic imagination, she would no doubt have jumped at the idea of a secret adoration which had brought him to the poor little village for her sake, for the chance of a passing encounter. But Rosalind was not of this turn of imagination, and that undefined doubt which wavered in her mind did a great deal to damp the wings of any such fancy. What he had said was almost equal to asking her to meet him in the park. She blushed all over at the thought—at the curious impossibility of it, the want of knowledge. It did not seem an insult to her, but such an incomprehensible ignorance in him that she was ashamed of it; that he should have been capable of such a mistake. Not a gentleman!Oh, surely he could never, never— And yet the testimony of those fine, refined features—the mouth so delicate and sensitive, the eyes so eloquent—was of such a different kind. And was it Uncle John he knew? But Uncle John had passed him on the road and had not known him. It was very strange altogether. She could not banish the beautiful, pleading eyes out of her mind. How they looked at her! They were almost a child’s eyes in their uncertainty and wistfulness, reading her face to see how far to go. And altogether he had the air of extreme youth, almost as young as herself, which, of course, in a man is boyhood. For what is a man of twenty? ten years, and more, younger and less experienced than a woman of that sober age. There was a sort of yearning of pity in her heart towards him, just tempered by that doubt. Poor boy! how badly he must have been brought up—how sadly ignorant not to know that a gentleman— And then she began to remember Lord Lytton’s novels, some of which she had read. There would have been nothing out of place in them had such a youth so addressed a lady. He was, indeed, not at all unlike a young man in Lord Lytton. He interested her very much, and filled her mind as she went lightly home. Who could he be, and why so anxious about her father’s health? or was that merely a reason for addressing her—a way, perhaps he thought, of securing her acquaintance, making up some sort of private understanding between them. Had not Rosalind heard somewhere that a boy was opt to select a much older woman as the object of his first admiration? Perhaps that might furnish an explanation for it, for he must be very young, not more than a boy.