Whenthe party arrived at the hotel and Aunt Sophy was informed of what had happened, her excitement was great. The children were caressed and scolded in a breath. After a while, however, the enormity of their behavior was dwelt upon by all their guardians together.
“I was saying, ma’am, that I couldn’t never take Miss Amy and Master Johnny near to that lake again. Oh, I couldn’t! The hotel garden, I couldn’t go farther, not with any peace of mind.”
“You hear what nurse says, children,” said Aunt Sophy; “she is quite right. It would be impossible for me to allow you to go out again unless you made me a promise, oh, a faithful promise.”
Amy was tired with the long walk after all the excitement; and she was always an impressionable little thing. She began to cry and protest that she never meant any harm, that the boat was so pretty, and that she was sure it was fastened and could not get away. But Johnny held his ground. “I could have doned it myself,” he said; “I know how to row. Nobody wasn’t wanted—if that fellow had let us alone.”
“Where is the gentleman, Rosalind?” cried Mrs. Lennox. “Oh, how could you be so ungrateful as to let him go without asking where he was to be found? To think he should have saved those precious children and not to know where to find him to thank him! Oh, children, only think, if you had been brought home all cold and stiff, and laid out there never to give any more trouble, never to go home again, never to speak to your poor, distracted auntie, or to poor Rosalind, or to— Oh, my darlings! What should I have done if you had been brought home to me like that? It would have killed me. I should never more have held up my head again.”
At this terrible prospect, and at the sight of Aunt Sophy’s tears, Amy flung her arms as far as they would go round that portly figure, and hid her sobs upon her aunt’s bosom. Johnny began to yield; he grew pale, and his big eyes veiled themselves with a film of tears. To think of lying there cold and stiff, as Aunt Sophy said, daunted the little hero. “I could have doned it,” he said, but faltered, and his mouth began to quiver.
“And Uncle John,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “and Rex! what would you have said never, never to see them again?”
Johnny, in his own mind, piled up the agony still higher—and the rabbits, and the pigeons, and his own pet guinea-pig, and his pony! He flung himself into Aunt Sophy’s lap, which was so large, and so soft, and so secure.
This scene moved Rosalind both to tears and laughter; for it was a little pathetic as well as funny, and the girl was overstrained. She would have liked to fling herself, too, into arms of love like Aunt Sophy’s, which were full—arms as loving, but more strong. The children did not want their mother, but Rosalind did. Her mind was moved by sentiments more complex than Johnny’s emotions, but she had no one to have recourse to. The afternoon brightness had faded, and the gray of twilight filled the large room, making everything indistinct. At this crisis the door opened and somebody was ushered into the room, some one who came forward with a hesitating, yet eager, step. “I hope I may be permitted, though I am without introduction, to ask if the children have taken any harm,” he said.
“It is Mr. Everard, Aunt Sophy.” Rosalind retired to the background, her heart beating loudly. She wanted to look on, to see what appearance he presented to a spectator, to know how he would speak, what he would say.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Lennox, standing up with a child in each arm, “it is the gentleman who saved my darlings—it is your deliverer, children. Oh, sir, what can I say to you; how can I even thank you? You have saved my life too, for I should never have survived if anything had happened to them.”
He stood against the light of one of the windows, unconscious of the eager criticism with which he was being watched. Perhaps the bow he made was a little elaborate, but his voice was soft and refined. “I am very glad if I have been of any service,” he said.
“Oh, service! it is far, far beyond that. I hope Rosalind said something to you; I hope she told you how precious they were, and that we could never, never forget.”
“There is nothing to thank me for, indeed. It was more a joke than anything else; the little things were in no danger so long as they sat still. I was scarcely out of my depth, not much more than wading all the time.”
“Aunt Sophy, that is what I told you,” said Johnny, withdrawing his head from under her arm. “I could have doned it myself.”
“Oh, hush, Johnny! Whatever way it was done, what does that matter? Here they are, and they might have been at the bottom of the lake. And you risked your own life or your health, which comes to the same thing! Pray sit down, Mr. Everard. If you are here,” Aunt Sophy went on, loosing her arms from the children and sitting down with the full purpose of enjoying a talk, “as I am, for the waters, to get drenched and to walk home in your wet clothes must have been madness—that is, if you are here for your health.”
“I am here for the baths, but a trifle like that could harm no one.”
“Oh, I trust not—oh, I anxiously trust not! It makes my heart stand still even to think of it. Are you getting any benefit? It is for rheumatism, I suppose? And what form does yours take? One sufferer is interested in another,” Mrs. Lennox said.
He seemed to wince a little, and threw a glance behind into the dimness to look for Rosalind. To confess to rheumatism is not interesting. He said at last, with a faint laugh, “I had rheumatic fever some years ago. My heart is supposed to be affected, that is all; the water couldn’t hurt that organ; indeed I think it did good.”
Rosalind, in the background, knew that this was meant for her; but her criticism was disarmed by a touch of humorous sympathy for the poor young fellow, who had expected, no doubt, to appear in the character of a hero, and was thus received as a fellow-sufferer in rheumatism. But Mrs. Lennox naturally saw nothing ludicrous in the situation. “Mine,” she said, “is in the joints. I get so stiff, and really to rise up after I have been sitting down for any time is quite an operation. I suppose you don’t feel anything of that sort? To be sure, you are so much younger—but sufferers have a fellow-feeling. Andwhen did you begin your baths? and how many do you mean to take? and do you think they are doing you any good? It is more than I can say just at present, but they tell me that it often happens so, and that it is afterwards that one feels the good result.”
“I know scarcely any one here,” said the young man, “so I have not been able to compare notes; but I am not ill, only taking the baths to please a—relation, who, perhaps,” he said with a little laugh, “takes more interest in me than I deserve.”
“Oh, I am sure not that!” said Aunt Sophy, with enthusiasm. “But, indeed, it is very nice of you to pay so much attention to your relation’s wishes. You will never repent putting yourself to trouble for her peace of mind, and I am sure I sympathize with her very much in the anxiety she must be feeling. When the heart is affected it is always serious. I hope, Mr. ——”
“Everard,” he said with a bow, once more just a little, as the critic behind him felt, too elaborate for the occasion.
“I beg your pardon. Rosalind did tell me; but I was so much agitated, almost too much to pay any attention. I hope, Mr. Everard, that you are careful to keep yourself from all agitation. I can’t think the shock of plunging into the lake could be good for you. Oh, I feel quite sure it couldn’t be good. I hope you will feel no ill results afterwards. But excitement of any sort, or agitation, that is the worst thing for the heart. I hope, for your poor dear relation’s sake, who must be so anxious, poor lady, that you will take every care.”
He gave a glance behind Mrs. Lennox to the shadow which stood between him and the window. “That depends,” he said, “rather on other people than on myself. You may be sure I should prefer to be happy and at ease if it were in my power.”
“Ah, well!” said Aunt Sophy, “that is very true. Of course our happiness depends very much upon other people. And you have done a great deal for mine, Mr. Everard. It would not have done me much good to have people telling me to be cheerfulif my poor little darlings had been at the bottom of the lake.” Here Aunt Sophy stopped and cried a little, then went on. “You are not, I think, living at our hotel, but I hope you will stay and dine with us. Oh, yes, I cannot take any refusal. We may have made your acquaintance informally, but few people can have so good a reason for wishing to know you. This is my niece, Miss Trevanion, Mr. Everard; the little children you saved are my brother’s children—the late Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt.”
Rosalind listened with her heart beating high. Was it possible that he would receive the introduction as if he had known nothing of her before? He rose and turned towards her, made once more that slightly stiff, too elaborate bow, and was silent. No, worse than that, began to say something about being happy to make—acquaintance.
“Aunt Sophy,” said Rosalind, stepping forward, “you are under a mistake. Mr. Everard knows us well enough. I met him before we left Highcourt.” And then she, too, paused, feeling with sudden embarrassment that there was a certain difficulty in explaining their meetings, a difficulty of which she had not thought. It was he now who had the advantage which she had felt to lie with herself.
“It is curious how things repeat themselves,” he said. “I had once the pleasure of recovering a boat that had floated away from Miss Trevanion on the pond at Highcourt, but I could not have ventured to claim acquaintance on so small an argument as that.”
Rosalind was silenced—her mind began to grow confused. It was not true that this was all, and yet it was not false. She said nothing; if it were wrong, she made herself an accomplice in the wrong; and Aunt Sophy’s exclamations soon put an end to the incident.
“So you had met before!” she cried. “So you know Highcourt! Oh, what a very small world this is!—everybody says so, but it is only now and then that one is sensible. But youmust tell us all about it at dinner. We dine at thetable d’hôte, if you don’t mind. It is more amusing, and I don’t like to shut up Rosalind with only an old lady like me for her company. You like it too? Oh, well, that is quite nice. Will you excuse us now, Mr. Everard, while we prepare for dinner? for that is the dressing-bell just ringing, and they allow one so little time. Give me your hand, dear, to help me up. You see I am quite crippled,” Mrs. Lennox said, complacently, forgetting how nimbly she had sprung from her chair with a child under each arm to greet their deliverer. She limped a little as she went out of the room on Rosalind’s arm. She was quite sure that her rheumatism made her limp; but sometimes she forgot that she had rheumatism, which is a thing that will happen in such cases now and then.
The room was still dark. It was not Mrs. Lennox’s custom to have it lighted before dinner, and when the door closed upon the ladies the young man was left alone. His thoughts were full of triumph and satisfaction, not unmingled with praise. He had attained by the chance of a moment what he had set his heart upon, he said to himself; for years he had haunted Highcourt for this end; he had been kept cruelly and unnaturally (he thought) from realizing it. Those who might have helped him, without any harm to themselves, had refused and resisted his desire, and compelled him to relinquish it. And now in a moment he had attained what he had so desired. Introduced under the most flattering circumstances, with every prepossession in his favor, having had it in his power to lay under the deepest obligation the family, the guardians as well as the girl who, he said to himself, was the only girl he had ever loved. Did he love Rosalind? He thought so, as Mrs. Lennox thought she had rheumatism. Both were serious enough—and perhaps this young stranger was not clearly aware how much it was he saw in Rosalind besides herself. He saw in her a great deal that did not meet the outward eye, though he also saw the share of beauty she possessed, magnified by hissmall acquaintance with women of her kind. He saw her sweet and fair and desirable in every way, as the truest lover might have done. And there were other advantages which such a lover as Roland Hamerton would have scorned to take into consideration, which Rivers—not able at his more serious age to put them entirely out of his mind—yet turned from instinctively as if it were doing her a wrong to remember them, but which this young man realized vividly and reminded himself of with rising exhilaration. With such a wife what might he not do? Blot out everything that was against him, attain everything he had ever dreamed of, secure happiness, advancement, wealth. He moved from window to window of the dim room, waiting for the ladies, in a state of exaltation indescribable. He had been raised at once from earth to heaven. There was not a circumstance that was not in his favor. He was received by them as an intimate, he was to be their escort, to be introduced by them, to form one of their party; and Rosalind! Rosalind! she was the only girl whom he had ever loved.
Hewas placed between the ladies at thetable d’hôte. Mrs. Lennox, on her side, told the story of what had happened to the lady on her other side, and Rosalind was appealed to by her left-hand neighbor to know what was the truth of the rumor which had begun to float about the little community. It was reported all down the table, so far, at least, as the English group extended, “That is the gentleman next to Mrs. Lennox—the children were drowning, and he plunged in and saved both.” “What carelessness to let them go so near the water! It is easy to see, poor things, that they have no mother.” “And did he save them both? Of course, they must both be safe or Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion would not have appeared at thetable d’hôte.” Such remarks as these, interspersedwith questions, “Who is the young fellow?—where has he sprung from? I never saw him before,” buzzed all about as dinner went on. Mr. Everard was presented by Mrs. Lennox, in her gratitude, to the lady next to her, who was rather a great lady, and put up her glass to look at him. He was introduced to the gentleman on Rosalind’s other hand by that gentleman’s request. Thus he made his appearance in society at Aix with greatestéclat. When they rose from the table he followed Rosalind out of doors into the soft autumnal night. The little veranda and the garden walks under the trees were full of people, under cover of whose noisy conversation there was abundant opportunity for a more interestingtête-à-tête. “You are too kind,” he said, “in telling this little story. Indeed, there was nothing to make any commotion about. You could almost have done it, without any help from me.”
“No,” she said. “I could not have done it; I should have tried and perhaps been drowned, too. But it is not I who have talked, it is Aunt Sophy. She is very grateful to you.”
“She has no occasion,” he said. “Whatever I could do for you, Miss Trevanion—” and then he stopped, somewhat breathlessly. “It was curious, was it not? that the boat on the pond should have been so much the same thing, though everything else was so different. And that is years ago.”
“Nearly two years.”
“Then you remember?” he said, in a tone of delighted surprise.
“I have much occasion to remember. It was at a very sad moment. I remember everything that happened.”
“To be sure,” said the young man. “No, I did not forget. It was only that in the pleasure of seeing you everything else went out of my mind. But I have never forgotten, Miss Trevanion, all your anxiety. I saw you, you may remember, the day you were leaving home.”
Rosalind raised her eyes to him with a look of pain. “It is not a happy recollection,” she said.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind. I hope you will forgive me for recalling to you what is so painful.”
“The sight of you recalls it,” she said; “it is not your fault, Mr. Everard, you had relations near Highcourt.”
“Only one, but nobody now—nobody. It was a sort of chance that took me there at all. I was in a little trouble, and then I left suddenly, as it happened, the same day as you did, Miss Trevanion. How well I remember it all! You were carrying the same little boy who was in the boat to-day—was it the same?—and you would not let me help you. I almost think if you had seen it was me you would not have allowed me to help you to-day.”
“If I had seen it was—” Rosalind paused with troubled surprise. Sometimes his fine voice and soft tones lulled her doubts altogether, but, again, a sudden touch brought them all back. He was very quick, however, to observe the changes in her, and changed with them with a curious mixture of sympathy and servility.
“Circumstances have carried me far away since then,” he said; “but I have always longed to know, to hear, something. If I could tell you the questions I have asked myself as to what might be going on; and how many times I have tried to get to England to find out!”
“We have never returned to Highcourt,” she said, confused by his efforts to bring back those former meetings, and not knowing how to reply. “I think we shall not till my brother comes of age. Yes, my little brother was the same. He is very much excited about what happened to-day; neither of them understood it at first, but now they begin to perceive that it is a wonderful adventure. I hope the wetting will do you no harm.”
“Please,” he said in a petulant tone, “if you do not want to vex me, say no more of that. I am not such a weak creature; indeed, there is nothing the matter with me, except in imagination.”
“I think,” said Rosalind, with a little involuntary laugh, “that the baths of Aix are good for the imagination. It grows by what it feeds on; though rheumatism does not seem to be an imaginative sort of malady.”
“You forget,” he cried, almost with resentment; “the danger of it is that it affects the heart, which is not a thing to laugh at.”
“Oh, forgive me!” Rosalind cried. “I should not have spoken so lightly. It was because you were so determined that nothing ailed you. And I hope you are right. The lake was so beautiful to-day. It did not look as if it could do harm.”
“You go there often? I saw you had been painting.”
“Making a very little, very bad, sketch, that was all. Mr. Everard, I think I must go in. My aunt will want me.”
“May I come, too? How kind she is! I feared that being without introduction, knowing nobody— But Mrs. Lennox has been most generous, receiving me without a question—and you, Miss Trevanion.”
“Did you expect me to stop you from saving the children till I had asked who you were?” cried Rosalind, endeavoring to elude the seriousness with which he always returned to the original subject. “It is a pretty manner of introduction to do us the greatest service, the greatest kindness.”
“But it was nothing. I can assure you it was nothing,” he said. He liked to be able to make this protestation. It was a sort of renewing of his claim upon them. To have a right, the very strongest right, to their gratitude, and yet to declare it was nothing—that was very pleasant to the young man. And in a way it was true. He would have done anything that it did not hurt him very much to do for Rosalind, even for her aunt and her little brothers and sisters, but to feel that he was entitled to their thanks and yet waived them was delightful to him. It was a statement over and over again of his right to be with them. He accompanied Rosalind to the room in which Aunt Sophy had established herself, with mingled confidence and timidity, ingratiating himself by every means that waspossible, though he did not talk very much. Indeed, he was not great in conversation at any time, and now he was so anxious to please that he was nervous and doubtful what to say.
Mrs. Lennox received the young people with real pleasure. She liked, as has been said in a previous part of this history, to have a young man about, in general attendance, ready to go upon her errands and make himself agreeable. It added to the ease and the gayety of life to have a lover upon hand, one who was not too far gone, who still had eyes for the other members of the party, and a serious intention of making himself generally pleasant. She had never concealed her opinion that an attendant of this description was an advantage. And Mrs. Lennox was imprudent to the bottom of her heart. She had plenty of wise maxims in store as to the necessity of keeping ineligible persons at a distance, but it did not occur to her to imagine that a well-looking young stranger attaching himself to her own party might be ineligible. Of Arthur Rivers she had known that his family lived in an obscure street in Clifton, which furnished her with objections at once. But of Mr. Everard, who had saved the children’s lives, she had no doubts. She did, indeed, mean to ask him if he belonged to the Everards of Essex, but in the meantime was quite willing to take that for granted.
“It is so curious,” she said, making room for him to bring a chair beside her, “that you and Rosalind should have met before, and how fortunate for us! Oh, yes, Highcourt is a fine place. Of course we think so, Rosalind and I, having both been born there. We think there is no place in the world like it; but I have a right to feel myself impartial, for I have been a good deal about; and there is no doubt it is a fine place. Did you see over the house, Mr. Everard? Oh, no, of course it was when my poor brother was ill. There were so many trying circumstances,” she added, lowering her voice, “that we thought it best just to leave it, you know, and the Elms does very well for the children as long as they are children. Ofcourse, when Reginald comes of age— Do you know the neighborhood of Clifton, Mr. Everard? Oh, you must come and see me there. It is a capital hunting country, you know, and that is always an inducement to a gentleman.”
“I should have no need of any inducement, if you are so kind.”
“It is you that have been kind,” Mrs, Lennox said. “I am sure if we can do anything to make our house agreeable to you— Now tell me how you get on here. How often do you take the baths? Oh, I hope you are regular—so much depends upon regularity, they tell me. Lady Blashfield, whom I was talking to at dinner, tells me that if you miss one it is as bad as giving up altogether. It is the continuity, she says. Young men are very difficult to guide in respect to their health. My dear husband, that is, Mr. Pulteney, myfirstdear husband, whom I lost when we were both quite young, might have been here now, poor dear fellow, if he had only consented to be an invalid, and to use the remedies. You must let one who has suffered so much say a word of warning to you, Mr. Everard. Use the remedies, and youth will do almost everything for you. He might have been here now—” Mrs. Lennox paused and applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
Young Everard listened with the most devout attention, while Rosalind, on her side, could not refrain from an involuntary reflection as to the extreme inconvenience of Mr. Pulteney’s presence now. If that had been all along possible, was not Aunt Sophy guilty of a kind of constructive bigamy? To hear her dwelling upon this subject, and the stranger listening with so much attention, gave Rosalind an insane desire to laugh. Even Roland Hamerton, she thought, would have seen the humor of the suggestion; but Everard was quite serious, lending an attentive ear. He was very anxious to please. There was an absence of ease about him in his anxiety. Not the ghost of a smile stole to his lips. He sat there until Mrs. Lennox got tired, and remembered that the early hour at which she beganto bathe every morning made it expedient now to go to bed. He was on the alert in a moment, offering his arm, and truly sympathetic about the difficulty she expressed in rising from her chair. “I can get on when once I am fairly started,” she said; “thank you so much, Mr. Everard. Rosalind is very kind, but naturally in a gentleman’s arm there is more support.”
“I am so glad that I can be of use,” he said fervently. And Rosalind followed up-stairs, carrying Aunt Sophy’s work, half pleased, half amused, a little disconcerted by the sudden friendship which had arisen between them. She was, herself, in a very uncertain, somewhat excited state of mind. The re-appearance of the stranger who had achieved for himself, she could not tell how, a place in her dreams, disturbed the calm in which she had been living, which in itself was a calm unnatural at her age. Her heart beat with curious content, expectation, doubt, and anxiety. He was not like the other men whom she had known. There was something uncertain about him, a curiosity as to what he would do or say, a suppressed alarm in her mind as to whether his doings and sayings would be satisfactory. He might make some terrible mistake. He might say something that would set in a moment a great gulf between him and her. It was uncomfortable, and yet perhaps it had a certain fascination in it. She never knew what was the next thing he might say or do. But Aunt Sophy was loud in his praises when they reached their own apartment. “What a thoroughly nice person!” she said. “What a modest, charming young man! not like so many, laughing in their sleeve, in a hurry to get away, taking no trouble about elder people. Mr. Everard has been thoroughly well brought up, Rosalind; he must have had a nice mother. That is always what I think when I see a young man with such good manners. His mother must have been a nice woman. I am sure if he had been my own nephew he could not have been more attentive to me.”
Rosalind said little in reply to this praise. She was pleased,and yet an intrusive doubt would come in. To be a little original, not like all the others, is not that an advantage? and yet— She went to her own room, thoughtful, yet with a sensation of novelty not without pleasure in her mind, and paused, in passing, at the children’s door to pay them her usual visit, and give them the kiss when they were asleep which their mother was not near to give. This visit had a twofold meaning to Rosalind. It was a visit of love to the little ones, that they might not be deprived of any tenderness that she could give; and it was a sort of pilgrimage of faithful devotion to the shrine which the mother had left empty. A pang of longing for that mother, and of the wondering pain which her name always called forth, was in her heart when she stooped over the little beds. Ordinarily, everything was dim—the faint night-light affording guidance to where they lay, and no more—and still, with nothing but the soft breathing of the two children, one in the outer and the other in the inner room. But to-night there was a candle burning within and the sound of nurse’s voice soothing Johnny, who, sitting up in his bed, was looking round him with eyes full of light, and that large childish wakefulness which seems a sort of protest against ever sleeping again.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind, I don’t know what to do with Master Johnny; he says a lady came and looked at him. You’ve not been here, have you, miss? I tell him there is no lady. He must just have dreamed it.”
“I didn’t dreamed it,” said Johnny. “It was a beautiful lady. She came inthere, and stoodhere. I want her to come again,” the child said, gazing about him with his great eyes.
“But it is impossible, Miss Rosalind,” said the nurse; “the door is locked, and there is no lady. He just must have been dreaming. He is a little upset with the accident.”
“We wasn’t a bit upsetted,” said Johnny. “I could have doned it myself. I wanted to tell the lady, Rosy, but she only said, ‘Go to sleep.’”
“That was the very wisest thing she could say. Go to sleep, and I will sit by you,” said Rosalind.
It was some time, however, before Johnny accomplished the feat of going to sleep. He was very talkative and anxious to fight his battles over again, and explain exactly how he would have “doned” it. When the little eyes closed at last, and all was still, Rosalind found the nurse waiting in the outer room in some anxiety.
“Yes, Miss Rosalind, I am sure he was off his head a little—not to call wandering, but just a little off his head. For how could any lady have got into this room? It is just his imagination. I had once a little boy before who was just the same, always seeing ladies and people whenever he was the least excited. I will give him a dose in the morning, and if he sees her again I would just send for the doctor. It is all physical, miss, them sort of visions,” said the nurse, who was up to the science of her time.
Mrs. Lennox’scure went on through the greater part of the month of September, and the friendship that had been begun so successfully grew into intimacy perhaps in a shorter time than would have been credible had the conditions of life been less easy. In the space of two or three days Mr. Everard had become almost a member of Mrs. Lennox’s party. He dined with them two evenings out of three. He walked by the elder lady’s chair when she went to her bath, he was always ready to give her his arm when she wished it, to help her to her favorite seat in the garden, to choose a place for her from which she could most comfortably hear the music. All these services to herself Aunt Sophy was quite aware were the price the young man paid for permission to approach Rosalind, to admire and address her, to form part of her surroundings, and by degrees to become her almost constant companion. Mrs. Lennoxagreed with Mr. Ruskin that this sort of apprenticeship in love was right and natural. If in spite of all these privileges he failed to please, she would have been sorry for him indeed, but would not have felt that he had any right to complain. It was giving him his chance like another; and she was of opinion that a lover or two on hand was a cheerful thing for a house. In the days of Messrs. Hamerton and Rivers the effect had been very good, and she had liked these unwearied attendants, these unpaid officers of the household, who were always ready to get anything or do anything that might happen to be wanted. It was lonely to be without one of those hangers-on, and she accepted with a kind of mild enthusiasm the young man who had begun his probation by so striking an exhibition of his fitness for the post. It may be objected that her ready reception of a stranger without any introduction or guarantee of his position was imprudent in the extreme, for who could undertake that Rosalind might not accept this suitor with more ready sympathy than she had shown for the others? And there can be no doubt that this was the case; but as a matter of fact Mrs. Lennox was not prudent, and it was scarcely to be expected that she should exercise a virtue unfamiliar to her in respect to the young man who had, as she loved to repeat, saved the lives of the children. He was one of the Essex Everards, she made no doubt. She had always forgotten to ask him, and as, she said, they had never got upon the subject of his family, he had said nothing to her about them. But there was nothing wonderful in that. It is always pleasant when a young man does talk about his people, and lets you know how many brothers and sisters he has, and all the family history, but a great many young men don’t do so, and there was nothing at all wonderful about it in this case. A young man who is at Aix for the baths, who has been at most places where the travelling English go, who can talk like other people about Rome and Florence, not to speak of a great many out-of-the-way regions—it would be ridiculous to suppose that he was not “of our ownclass.” Even Aunt Sophy’s not very fastidious taste detected a few wants about him. He was not quite perfect in all points in his manners; he hesitated when a man in society would not have hesitated. He had not been at any university, nor even at a public school. All these things, however, Mrs. Lennox accounted for easily—when she took the trouble to think of them at all—by the supposition that he had been brought up at home, most likely in the country. “Depend upon it, he is an only child,” she said to Rosalind, “and he has been delicate—one can see that he is delicate still—and they have brought him up at home. Well, perhaps it is wrong—at least, all the gentlemen say so; but if I had an only child I think I should very likely do the same, and I am sure I feel very much for his poor mother. Why? Oh, because I don’t think he is strong, Rosalind. He colors like a girl when he makes any little mistake. He is not one of your bold young men that have a way of carrying off everything. He does make little mistakes, but then that is one of the things that is sure to happen when you bring boys up at home.”
Rosalind, who became more and more inclined as the days went on to take the best view of young Everard’s deficiencies, accepted very kindly this explanation. It silenced finally, she believed, that chill and horrible doubt, that question which she had put to herself broadly when she saw him first, which she did not even insinuate consciously now, but which haunted her, do what she would. Was he, perhaps, not exactly a gentleman? No, she did not ask that now. No doubt Aunt Sophy (who sometimes hit upon the right explanation, though she could not be called clever) was right, and the secret of the whole matter was that he had been brought up at home. There could be no doubt that the deficiencies which had at first suggested this most awful of all questions became rather interesting than otherwise when you came to know him better. They were what might be called ignorances, self-distrusts, an unassured condition of mind, rather than deficiencies; and hisblush over his “little mistakes,” as Mrs. Lennox called them, and the half-uttered apology and the deprecatory look, took away from a benevolent observer all inclination towards unkindly criticism. Mrs. Lennox, who soon became “quite fond of” the young stranger, told him frankly when he did anything contrary to the code of society, and he took such rebukes in the very best spirit, but was unfortunately apt to forget and fall into the same blunder again. There were some of these mistakes which kept the ladies in amusement, and some which made Rosalind, as she became more and more “interested,” blush with hot shame—a far more serious feeling than that which made the young offender blush. For instance, when he found her sketch-book one morning, young Everard fell into ecstasies over the sketch Rosalind had been making of the lake on that eventful afternoon which had begun their intercourse. It was a very bad sketch, and Rosalind knew it. That golden sheet of water, full of light, full of reflections, with the sun blazing upon it, and the hills rising up on every side, and the sky looking down into its depths, had become a piece of yellow mud with daubs of blue and brown here and there, and the reeds in the foreground looked as if they had been cut out of paper and pasted on. “Don’t look at it. I can’t do very much, but yet I can do better than that,” she had said, finding him in rapt contemplation of her unsatisfactory performance, and putting out her hand to close the book. He looked up at her, for he was seated by the table, hanging over the sketch with rapture, with the most eager deprecation.
“I think it is lovely,” he said; “don’t try to take away my enjoyment. I wonder how any one can turn a mere piece of paper into a picture!”
“You are laughing at me,” said Rosalind, with a little offence.
“I—laughing! I would as soon laugh in church. I think it is beautiful. I can’t imagine how you do it. Why, there are the reflections in the water just as you see them. I never thought before that it was so pretty.”
“Oh!” Rosalind cried, drawing a long breath. It hurt her that he should say so, and it hurt still more to think that he was endeavoring to please her by saying so. “I am sure it is your kindness that makes you praise it; but, Mr. Everard, you must know that I am not quite ignorant. When you say such things of this daub it sounds like contempt—as if you thought I did not know better.”
“But suppose I don’t know any better?” he said, looking up at her with lustrous eyes full of humility, without even his usual self-disgust at having said something wrong. “Indeed, you must believe me, I don’t. It is quite true. Is it a fault, Miss Trevanion, when one does not know?”
What could Rosalind say? She stood with her hand put out towards the book, looking down upon the most expressive countenance, a face which of itself was a model for a painter. There was very little difference between them in age, perhaps a year or so to his advantage, not more; and something of the freemasonry of youth was between them, besides the more delicate link of sentiment. Yes, she said to herself, it was a fault. A man, a gentleman, should not be so ignorant. Something must be wrong before such ignorance could be. But how say this or anything like it to her companion, who threw himself so entirely upon her mercy? She closed the book that had been open before him and drew it hastily away.
“I am afraid,” she said, “your eye is not good; of course it is no fault except to think thatIcould be so silly, that I could accept praise which I don’t deserve.”
“Ah!” he said, “I see what you mean. You despise me for my ignorance, and it is true I am quite ignorant; but then how could I help it? I have never been taught.”
“Oh!” cried Rosalind again, thinking the apology worse than the fault, bad as that was. “But you have seen pictures—you have been in the galleries?”
“Without any instruction,” he said. “I do admirethat, but I don’t care for the galleries. Oh, but I never say so except to you.”
She was silent in the dreadful situation in which she found herself. She did not know how to behave, such unutterable want of perception had never come in her way before.
“Then I suppose,” she said, with awful calm, “the chromo-lithographs, those are what you like? Mine is something like them, that is why you approve of it, I suppose?”
“I like it,” he said simply, “because you were doing it that day, and because that is where I saw you sitting when everything happened. And because the lake and the mountains and the sky all seem yours to me now.”
This speech was of a character very difficult to ignore and pass over as if it meant nothing. But Rosalind had now some experience, and was not unused to such situations. She said hurriedly, “I see—it is the association that interests you. I remember a very great person, a great author, saying something like that. He said it was the story of the pictures he liked, and when that pleased him he did not think so much about the execution. If he had not been a great person he would not have dared to say it. An artist, a true artist, would shiver to hear such a thing. But that explains why you like my daub. It is better than if you really thought it itself worthy of praise.”
“But I—” here young Everard paused; he saw by her eyes that he must not go any further, there was a little kindling of indignation in them. Where had he been all his life that he did not know any better than that? Had he gone on, Rosalind might not have been able to contain herself, and there were premonitory symptoms in the air.
“I wish,” he said, “that you would tell me what is nice and what isn’t.”
“Nice! Oh, Mr, Everard!” Rosalind breathed out with a shudder. “Perhaps you would call Michael Angelo nice,” she added, with a laugh.
“It is very likely that I might; you must forgive me. I have a relation who laughs at me in the same way, but how can one know if one has never been taught?”
“One is never taught such things,” it was on Rosalind’s lips to say, but with an impatient sigh she forbore. Afterwards, when she began to question herself on the subject, Rosalind took some comfort from the thought that Roland Hamerton knew almost as little about art as it is possible for a well-bred young Englishman to know. Ah! but that made all the difference. He knew enough to have thought her sketch a dreadful production; he knew enough to abhor the style of the chromo-lithograph. Even a man who has been brought up at home must have seen the pictures on his own walls. This thought cast her down again, but she began after this to break up into small morsels adapted to her companion’s comprehension the simplest principles of art, and to give him little hints about the fundamental matters which are part of a gentleman’s education in this respect, and even to indicate to him what terms are commonly used. He was very quick; he did not laugh out at her efforts as Roland would have done; he picked up the hints and adopted every suggestion—all which compliances pleased Rosalind in a certain sense, yet in another wrapped her soul in trouble, reviving again and again that most dreadful of all possible doubts, just when she thought that it had been safely laid to rest.
And yet all the while this daily companion made his way into something which, if not the heart, was dangerously near it, a sort of vestibule of the heart, where those who enter may hope to go further with good luck. He was ignorant in many ways. He did not know much more of books than of pictures—sometimes he expressed an opinion which took away her breath—and he was always on the watch for indications how far he might go; a sort of vigilance which was highly uncomfortable, and suggested some purpose on his part, some pursuit which was of more consequence to him than his natural opinions or traditions, all of which he seemed ready to sacrifice at a word. Rosalind was used to the ease of society, an ease, perhaps, more apparent than real, and this eagerness disconcertedher greatly. It was true that it might bear a flattering interpretation, if it was to recommend himself to her that he was ready to make all these sacrifices, to change even his opinions, to give up everything that could displease her. If all expedients are fair in love, is it not justifiable to watch that no word may offend, to express no liking unless it is sure to be in harmony with the tastes of the object loved, to be always on the alert and never to forget the purpose aimed at? This question might, perhaps, by impartial persons, be considered open to a doubt, but when one is one’s self the object of such profound homage it is natural that the judgment should be slightly biassed. And there was a certain personal charm about him notwithstanding all his deficiencies. It was difficult for a girl not to be touched by the devotion which shone upon her from such a pair of wonderful eyes.
Whilethis intercourse was going on, and Mr. Everard became more and more the associate of the ladies, the little shock that had been given them by the result of Johnny’s excitement on the night of the accident grew into something definite and rather alarming. Johnny was not ill—so far as appeared, he was not even frightened; but he continued to see “the lady” from time to time, and more than once a cry from the room in which he slept had summoned Rosalind, and even Mrs. Lennox, forgetful of her rheumatism. On these occasions Johnny would be found sitting up in his bed, his great eyes like two lamps, shining even in the dim glow of the night-light. It was at an hour when he should have been asleep, when nurse had gone to her supper, and to that needful relaxation which nurses as well as other mortals require. The child was not frightened, but there was a certain excitement about this periodical awakening. “The lady! the lady!” he said. “Oh, my darling,”cried Aunt Sophy, trembling; “what lady? There could be no lady. You have been dreaming. Go to sleep, Johnny, and think of it no more.”
“I sawed her,” cried the child. He pushed away Mrs. Lennox and clung to Rosalind, who had her arms round him holding him fast. “I never was asleep at all, Rosy; I just closed my eyes, and then I opened them and I sawed the lady.”
“Oh, Rosalind, he has just been dreaming. Oh, Johnny dear, that is all nonsense; there was no lady!” Aunt Sophy cried.
“Tell me about her,” said Rosalind. “Was it a strange lady? Did you know who she was?”
“It is justthelady,” cried Johnny, impatiently. “I told you before. She is much more taller than Aunt Sophy, with a black thing over her head. She wouldn’t stay, because you came running, and she didn’t want you. But I want the lady to speak to me— I want her to speak to me. Go away, Rosy!” the little fellow cried.
“Dear, the lady will not come back again to-night. Tell me about her. Johnny, did you know who she was?”
“I told you: she’s justthelady,” cried Johnny, with the air of one whose explanation leaves nothing to be desired.
“Oh, Rosalind, you are just encouraging him in his nonsense. He was dreaming. My darling, you were dreaming. Nurse, here is this little boy been dreaming again about the lady, as he calls her. You must give him a dose. He must have got his little digestion all wrong. It can be nothing but that, you know,” Aunt Sophy said. She drew the nurse, who had hastened up from her hour’s relaxation in alarm, with her into the outer room. Mrs. Lennox herself was trembling. She clutched the woman’s arm with a nervous grasp. “What does he mean about this lady? Is there any story about a lady? I am quite sure it is all nonsense, or that it is just a dream,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a nervous flutter in the bow of her cap. “Is there any story (though it is all nonsense) of a haunted room oranything of that sort? If there is, I sha’n’t stay here, not another day.”
The nurse, however, had heard no such story: she stood whispering with her mistress, talking over this strange occurrence, while Rosalind soothed and quieted the excited child. Amy’s little bed was in the outer room, but all was still there, the child never stirring, so absolutely noiseless that her very presence was forgotten by the two anxious women comparing notes. “He always keeps to the same story,” said nurse. “I can’t tell what to make of it, ma’am, but Master Johnny always was a little strange.”
“What do you mean by a little strange? He is a dear child, he never gives any trouble, he is just a darling,” Aunt Sophy said. “It is his digestion that has got a little wrong. A shock like that of the other day—it sometimes will not tell for some time, and as often as not it puts their little stomachs wrong. A little medicine will set everything right.”
Nurse demurred to this, having notions of her own, and the discussion went on till Rosalind, who had persuaded Johnny to compose himself, and sat by him till he fell asleep, came out and joined them. “It will be better for you not to leave him without calling me or some one,” she said.
“Miss Rosalind!” cried nurse, with natural desperation, “children is dreadfully tiring to have them all day long, and every day. And nurses is only flesh and blood like other people. If I’m never to have a moment’s rest, day nor night, I think I shall go off my head.”
All this went on in the room where little Amy lay asleep. She was so still that she was not considered at all. She was, indeed, at all times so little disposed to produce herself or make any call upon the attention of those about her, that the family, as is general, took poor little Amy at her own showing and left her to herself. It did not even seem anything remarkable that she was so still—and nobody perceived the pair of wide-open eyes with which she watched all that was going on under thecorner of the coverlet. Even Rosalind scarcely looked towards her little sister’s bed, and all the pent-up misery and terror which a child can conceal (and how much that implies) lay unconsoled and unlightened in poor little Amy’s breast. Meanwhile Johnny had fallen fast asleep, untroubled by any further thought of the apparition which only he was supposed to have seen.
This brought a great deal of trouble into the minds of Johnny’s guardians. Mrs. Lennox was so nearly breaking down under a sense of the responsibility that her rheumatism, instead of improving with her baths, grew worse than ever, and she became so stiff that Rosalind and Everard together were needed, each at one arm, to raise her from her chair. The doctor was sent for, who examined Johnny, and, after hearing all the story, concluded that it was suppressed gout in the child’s system, and that baths to bring it out would be the best cure. He questioned Mrs. Lennox so closely as to her family and all their antecedents that it very soon appeared a certain fact that all the Trevanions had suffered from suppressed gout, which explained everything, and especially all peculiarities in the mind or conduct. “The little boy,” said the doctor, who spoke English so well, “is the victim of the physiological sins of his forefathers. Pardon, madam; I do not speak in a moral point of view. They drank Oporto wine and he sees what you call ghosts; the succession is very apparent. This child,” turning to Amy, who stood by, “she also has suppressed gout.”
“Oh, Amy is quite well,” cried Aunt Sophy; “there is nothing at all the matter with Amy. But it cannot be denied that there is gout in the family. Indeed, when gentlemen come to a certain age they always suffer in that way, though I am sure I don’t know why. My poor father and grandfather, too, as I have always heard. Your papa, Rosalind, with him it was the heart.”
“They are all connected. Rheumatism, it is the brother of gout, and rheumatism is the tyrant which affects the heart. No,my dear young lady, it is not the emotions, nor love, nor disappointment, nor any of the pretty things you think; it is rheumatism that is most fatal for the heart. I will settle for the little boy a course of baths, and he will see no more ladies; that is,” said the doctor, with a wave of his hand, “except the very charming ladies whom he has a right to see. But this child, she has it more pronounced; she is more ill than the little boy.”
“Oh, no, doctor, it is only that Amy is always pale; there is nothing the matter with her. Do you feel anything the matter with you, Amy, my dear?”
“No, Aunt Sophy,” said the little girl in a very low voice, turning her head away.
“I told you so; there is nothing the matter with her. She is a pale little thing. She never has any color. But Johnny! Doctor, oh, I hope you will do your best for Johnny! He quite destroys all our peace and comfort. I am afraid to open my eyes after I go to bed, lest I should see the lady too; for that sort of thing is very catching. You get it into your mind. If there is any noise I can’t account for, I feel disposed to scream. I am sure I shall be seeing it before long if Johnny gets no better. But I have always supposed in such cases that it was the digestion that was out of order,” Mrs. Lennox said, returning, but doubtfully, to her original view.
“It is all the same thing,” said the doctor, cheerfully waving his hand; and then he patted Johnny on the head, who was half overawed, half pleased, to have an illness which procured unlimited petting without any pain. The little fellow began his baths immediately, but next night he saw the lady again. This time he woke and found her bending over him, and gave forth the cry which was now so well known by all the party. Mrs. Lennox, who rushed into the room the first, being in her own chamber, which was near Johnny’s, had to be led back to the sitting-room in a state of nervous prostration, trembling and sobbing. When she was placed in her chair and a glass ofwine administered to her, she declared that she had seen it too. “Oh, how can you ask me what it was? I saw something move. Do you think,” with a gasp, “Rosalind, that one can keep one’s wits about one, with all that going on? I am sure I saw something—something black go out of the door—or at least something moved. The curtain? oh, how can you say it was the curtain? I never thought of that. Are you sure you didn’t see anything, Rosalind?”
“I saw the wind in the curtain, Aunt Sophy: the window was open, and it blew out and almost frightened me too.”
“Oh, I could not say I was frightened,” said Mrs. Lennox, grasping Rosalind’s hand tight. “A curtain does bulge out with the wind, doesn’t it? I never thought of that. I saw something—move—I—wasn’t frightened, only a little nervous. Perhaps it was—the wind in the curtain. You are sure you were frightened too.”
“It blew right out upon me, like some one coming to meet me.”
Aunt Sophy grasped Rosalind’s hand tight. “It must have some explanation,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything super— You don’t believe in—that sort of thing, Rosalind?”
“Dear Aunt Sophy, I am sure it was the curtain. I saw it too. I would not say so if I did not feel—sure—”
“Oh, my dear, what a comfort it is to have a cool head like yours. You’re not carried away by your feelings like me. I’m so sympathetic, I feel as other people feel; to hear Johnny cry just made me I can’t tell how. It was dreadfully like some one moving, Rosalind.”
“Yes, Aunt Sophy. When the wind got into the folds, it was exactly like some one moving.”
“You are sure it was the curtain, Rosalind.”
Poor Rosalind was as little sure as any imaginative girl could be; she, too, was very much shaken by Johnny’s vision; at her age it is so much more easy to believe in the supernatural than in spectral illusions or derangement of the digestion. She didnot believe that the stomach was the source of fancy, or that imagination only meant a form of suppressed gout. Her nerves were greatly disturbed, and she was as ready to see anything, if seeing depended upon an excited condition, as any young and impressionable person ever was. She was glad to soothe Mrs. Lennox with an easy explanation. But Rosalind did not believe that it was the curtain which had deceived Johnny. Neither did she believe in the baths, or in the suppressed gout. She was convinced in her mind that the child spoke the truth, and that it was some visitor from the unseen who came to him. But who was it? Dark fears crossed her mind, and many a wistful wonder. There were no family warnings among the Trevanions, or it is to be feared that reason would have yielded in Rosalind’s mind to nature and faith. As it was, her heart grew feverish and expectant. The arrival of the letters from England every morning filled her with terror. She dreaded to see a black-bordered envelope, a messenger of death.
Johnnythrove, notwithstanding his visions. He woke up in the morning altogether unaffected, so far as appeared, by what he saw at night. He had always been more or less the centre of interest, both by dint of being the only male member of the party and because he was the youngest, and he was more than ever the master of the situation now. He did not mind his baths, and he relished the importance of his position. So much time as Mrs. Lennox had free from her “cure” was entirely occupied with Johnny. She thought he wanted “nourishment” of various dainty kinds, to which the little fellow had not the least objection. Secretly in her heart Aunt Sophy was opposed to the idea of suppressed gout, and clung to that of impaired digestion. Delicate fricassees of chicken, game, the earliest products ofla chasse, she ordered for him instead ofthe roast mutton of old. He had fine custards and tempting jellies, while Sophy and Amy ate their rice pudding; and in the intervals between his meals Aunt Sophy administered glasses of wine, cups of jelly, hunches of spongecake, to the boy. He took it all with the best grace in the world—and an appetite which it was a pleasure to see—and throve and grew, but nevertheless still saw the lady at intervals with a pertinacity which was most discouraging. It may be supposed that an incident so remarkable had not passed without notice in the curious little community of the hotel. And the first breath of it, whispered by nurse in the ear of some confidante, brought up the landlady from the bureau in a painful condition of excitement, first to inquire and then to implore that complete secrecy might be kept on the matter. Madame protested that there was no ghost in her well-regulated house. If the little boy saw anything it must be a ghost whom the English family had brought with them: such things, it was well known, did exist in English houses. But there were no ghosts in Aix, much less in the Hotel Venat. To request ladies in the middle of their cure to find other quarters was impossible, not to say that Madame Lennox and her charming family were quite the most distinguished party at the hotel, and one which she would not part with on any consideration; but if the little monsieur continued to have his digestion impaired (and she could recommend a most excellenttisanethat worked marvels), might she begces damesto keep silence on the subject? The reputation of a hotel was like that of a woman, and if once breathed upon— Mrs. Lennox remained in puzzling and puzzled silence for some time after this visit was over. About a quarter of an hour after her thought burst forth.
“Rosalind! I don’t feel at all reassured by what that woman said. Why should she make all that talk about the house if there wasn’t some truth in it? It is a very creepy, disagreeable thing to think of, and us living on the very brink of it, so to speak. But, after all, what if Johnny’s lady shouldbe something—some—appearance, some mystery about the house?”
“You thought it was Johnny’s digestion, Aunt Sophy.”
“So I did: but then, you know, one says that sort of thing when one can’t think of anything else. I believe it is his digestion, but, at the same time, how can one tell what sort of things may have happened in great big foreign houses, and so many queer people coming and going? There might have been a murder or something, for anything we know.”
This suggestion awoke a tremor in Rosalind’s heart, for she was not very strong-minded, nor fortified by any consistent opinion in respect to ghosts. She said somewhat faintly, with a laugh, “I never heard of a ghost in a hotel.”
“In a hotel? I should think a hotel was just the sort of place, with all kinds of strange people. Mind, however,” said Aunt Sophy after a pause, “I don’t believe in ghosts at all, not at all; there are no such things. Only foolish persons, servants and the uneducated, put any faith in them (it was the entrance of Amy and Sophy in the midst of this discussion that called forth such a distinct profession of faith); and now your Uncle John is coming,” she added cheerfully, “and it will all be cleared up and everything will come right.”
“Will Uncle John clear up about the lady?” said Sophy, with a toss of her little impertinent head. “He will just laugh, I know. He will say he wished he had ladies come to see him like that. Uncle John,” said this small critic, “is never serious at all about us children. Oh, perhaps about you grown-up people; but he will just laugh, I know. And so shall I laugh. All the fuss that is made is because Johnny is the boy. Me and Amy, we might see elephants and you would not mind, Aunt Sophy. It is because Johnny is the boy.”
“You are a little impertinent! I think just as much about Amy—and the child is looking pale, don’t you think so, Rosalind? But you are never disturbed in your sleep, my pet, nor take things in your little head. You are the quietest littlewoman. Indeed, I wish she would be naughty sometimes, Rosalind. What is the matter with you, dear? Don’t you want me to talk to you? Well, if my arm is disagreeable, Amy—”
“Oh, no, no, Aunt Sophy!” cried the child, with an impetuous kiss, but she extricated herself notwithstanding, and went away to the farther window, where she sat down on a footstool, half hidden among the curtains. The two ladies, looking at her, began to remember at the same moment that this had become Amy’s habitual place. She was always so quiet that to become a little quieter was not remarked in her as it would have been in the other children: she had always been pale, but not so pale as now. The folds of the long white curtain, falling half over her, added to the delicacy of her aspect. She seemed to shrink and hide herself from their gaze, though she was not conscious of it.
“Dear me!” said Aunt Sophy, “perhaps there is something after all in the doctor’s idea of suppressed gout being in the family. You don’t show any signs of it, Rosalind, Heaven be praised! or Sophy either; but just look at that child, how pale she is!”
Rosalind did not make any reply. She called her little sister to her presently, but Amy declared that she was “reading a book,” which was, under Mrs. Lennox’s sway, a reason above all others for leaving the little student undisturbed. Mrs. Lennox had not been used to people who were given to books, and she admired the habit greatly. “Don’t call her if she is reading, Rosalind. I wonder how it is the rest of you don’t read. But Amy always has her book. Perhaps it is because of reading so much that she is so pale. Well, Uncle John is coming to-morrow, and he will want the children to take long walks, and I dare say all this little confusion will blow away. I wish John had come a little sooner; he might have tried the ‘cure’ as well as me, for I am sure he has rheumatism, if not gout. Gentlemen always have one or the other when they come to your uncle’s age, and it might have saved him an illness later,”said Aunt Sophy. She had to go away in her chair, in a few minutes, for her bath, and it was this that made her think what an excellent thing it would be for John.
When she had gone, Rosalind sat very silent with her two little sisters in the room. Sophy went on talking, while Rosalind mused and kept silent. She was so well accustomed to Sophy talking that she took little notice of it. When the little girl said anything of sufficient importance to penetrate the mist of self-abstraction in which her sister sat, Rosalind would answer her. But generally she took little notice. She woke up, however, in the midst of one of Sophy’s sentences which caught her ear, she could not tell why.
“Think it’s a real lady?” Sophy said. It was at the end of a long monologue, during which her somewhat sharp voice had run on monotonous without variety. “Think it’s a real lady? There could be no ghost here, or if there was, why should it go to Johnny, who don’t understand, who has no sense. I think it’s a real lady that comes in to look at the children. Perhaps she is fond of children; perhaps she’s not in her right mind,” said Sophy; “perhaps she has lost a little boy like Johnny; perhaps—” here she clapped her hands together, which startled Rosalind greatly, and made little Amy, looking up with big eyes from within the curtain, jump from her seat; “I know who it is—it is the lady that gave him the toy.”
“The toy—what toy?”
“Oh, you know very well, Rosalind. That is what it is—the lady that had lost a child like Johnny, that brought him that thing that you wind up, that runs, that nurse says must have cost a mint of money. She says mint of money, and why shouldn’t I? I shall watch to-night, and try if I can’t see her,” cried Sophy; “that is the lady! and Johnny is such a little silly he has never found it out. But it is areallady, that I am quite certain, whatever the children say.”
“But Amy has never seen anything, Sophy, or heard anything,” Rosalind said.
“Oh, Rosalind, how soft you are! How could she help hearing about it, with Aunt Sophy and you rampaging in the room every night! You don’t know how deep she is; she would just go on and go on, and never tell.”
“Amy, come here,” said Rosalind.
“Oh, please, Rosy! I am in such an interesting part.”
“Amy, come here—you can go back to your book after. Sophy says you have heard about the lady Johnny thinks he sees.”
“Yes, Rosalind.”
“You have known about her perhaps all the time, though we thought you slept so sound and heard nothing! You don’t mean that you have seen her too?”
Amy stood by her sister’s knee, her hand reluctantly allowing itself to be held in Rosalind’s hand. She submitted to this questioning with the greatest reluctance, her little frame all instinct with eagerness to get away. But here she gave a hasty look upward as if drawn by the attraction of Rosalind’s eyes. How strange that no one had remarked how white and small she had grown! She gave her sister a solemn, momentary look, with eyes that seemed to expand as they looked, but said nothing.
“Amy, can’t you answer me?” Rosalind cried.
Amy’s eyelids grew big with unwilling tears, and she made a great effort to draw away her hand.
“Tell me, Amy, is there anything you can’t tell Rosalind? You shall not be worried or scolded, but tell me.”
There was a little pause, and then the child flung her arms round her sister’s neck and hid her face. “Oh, Rosalind!”
“Yes, my darling, what is it? Tell me!”
Amy clung as if she would grow there, and pressed her little head, as if the contact strengthened her, against the fair pillar of Rosalind’s throat. But apparently it was easier to cling there and give vent to a sob or two than to speak. She pressed closer and closer, but she made no reply.
“She has seen her every time,” said Sophy, “only she’s such a story she won’t tell. She is always seeing her. When you think she’s asleep she is lying all shivering and shaking with the sheet over her head. That is how I found out. She is so frightened she can’t go to sleep. I said I should tell Rosalind; Rosalind is the eldest, and she ought to know. But then, Amy thinks—”
“What, Sophy?”
“Well, that you are only our half-sister. Youareonly our half-sister, you know. We all think that, and perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”
To Rosalind’s heart this sting of mistrust went sharp and keen, notwithstanding the close strain of the little girl’s embrace which seemed to protest against the statement. “Is it really, really so?” she cried, in a voice of anguish. “Do you think I am not your real sister, you little ones? Have I done anything to make you think—”
“Oh, no, no! Oh, Rosalind, no! Oh, no, no!” cried the little girl, clasping closer and closer. The ghost, if it was a ghost, the “lady” who, Sophy was sure, was a “real lady,” disappeared in the more immediate pressure of this poignant question. Even Rosalind, who had now herself to be consoled, forgot, in the pang of personal suffering, to inquire further.
And they were still clinging together in excitement and tears when the door was opened briskly, and Uncle John, all brown and dusty and smiling, a day too soon, and much pleased with himself for being so, suddenly marched into the room. A more extraordinary change of sentiment could not be conceived. The feminine tears dried up in a moment, the whole aspect of affairs changed. He was so strong, so brown, so cordial, so pleased to see them, so full of cheerful questions, and the account of what he had done. “Left London only yesterday,” he said, “and here I am. What’s the matter with Amy? Crying! You must let her off, Rosalind, whatever the sin may be, for my sake.”