Old Mr. Blake sat down again at the table, fumbled for his spectacles, unfolded his papers. Meanwhile she stood and waited, with the others behind her, and listened without moving while he read, this time in its legal phraseology, the terrible sentence. She drew a long breath when it was over. This time there was no amaze or confusion. The words were like fire in her brain.
“Now I begin to understand. I suppose,” she said, “that there is nothing but public resistance, and perhaps bringing it before a court of law, that could annulthat? Oh, do not fear. I will not try; but is that the only way?”
The old lawyer shook his head. “Not even that. He had the right; and though he has used it as no man should have used it, still, it is done, and cannot be undone.”
“Then there is no help for me,” she said. She was perfectly quiet, without a tear or sob or struggle. “No help for me,” she repeated, with a wan little smile about her mouth. “After seventeen years! He had the right, do you say? Oh, how strange a right! when I have been his wife for seventeen years.” Then she added, “Is it stipulated when I am to go? Is there any time given to prepare? And have you told my boy?”
“Not a word has been said, Grace—to any one,” John Trevanion said.
“Ah, I did not think of that. What is he to be told? A boy of that age. He will think his mother is— John, God help me! what will you say to my boy?”
“God help us all!” cried the strong man, entirely overcome. “Grace, I do not know.”
“The others are too young,” she said; “and Rosalind— Rosalind will trust me; but Rex—it will be better to tell him the simple truth, that it is his father’s will; and perhaps when he is a man he will understand.” She said this with a steady voice, like some queen making her last dispositions in fullhealth and force before her execution—living, yet dying. Then there ensued another silence, which no one ventured to break, during which the doomed woman went back into her separate world of thought. She recovered herself after a moment, and, looking round, with once more that faint smile, asked, “Is there anything else I ought to hear?”
“There is this, Mrs. Trevanion,” said old Blake. “One thing is just among so much— What was settled on you is untouched. You have a right to—”
She threw her head high with an indignant motion, and turned away; but after she had made a few steps towards the door, paused and came back. “Look,” she said, “you gentlemen; here is something that is beyond you, which a woman has to bear. I must accept this humiliation, too. I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed.” She looked at them with a bitter dew in her eyes, not tears. “I must take his money and be thankful. God help me!” she said.
Mrs. Trevanionappeared at dinner as usual, coming into the drawing-room at the last moment, to the great surprise of the gentlemen, who stared and started as if at a ghost as she came in, their concealed alarm and astonishment forming a strange contrast to the absolute calm of Mrs. Lennox, the slight boyish impatience of Reginald at being kept waiting for dinner, and the evident relief of Rosalind, who had been questioning them all with anxious eyes. Madam was very pale; but she smiled and made a brief apology. She took old Mr. Blake’s arm to go in to dinner, who, though he was a man who had seen a great deal in his life, shook “like as a leaf,” he said afterwards; but her arm was as steady as a rock, and supported him. The doctor said to her under his breath as they sat down, “You are doing too much. Remember, endurance is not boundless.” “Is it not?” she said aloud, looking at him with a smile. He was a man of composed and robust mind, but he ate no dinner that day. The dinner was indeed a farce for most of the company. Aunt Sophy, indeed, though with a shake of her head, and a sighing remark now and then, took full advantage of her meal, and Reginald cleared off everything that was set before him with the facility of his age; but the others made such attempts as they could to deceive the calm but keen penetration of Dorrington, who saw through all their pretences, and having served many meals in many houses after a funeral, knew that “something” must be “up,” more than Mr. Trevanion’s death, to account for the absence of appetite. There was not much conversation either. Aunt Sophy, indeed, to the relief of every one, took the position of spokeswoman. “I would not have troubled to come down-stairs this evening, Grace,” she said. “You always did too much. I am sure all the watching and nursing you have had would have killed ten ordinary people; but she never spared herself, did she, doctor? Well, it is a satisfaction now. You must feel that you neglected nothing, and that everything that could be thought of was done—everything! I am sure you and I, John, can bear witness to that, that a more devoted nurse no man ever had. Poor Reginald,” she added, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “if he did not always seem so grateful as he ought, you may be sure, dear, it was his illness that was to blame, not his heart.” No one dared to make any reply to this, till Madam herself said, after a pause, her voice sounding distinct through a hushed atmosphere of attention, “All that is over and forgotten; there is no blame.”
“Yes, my dear,” said innocent Sophy; “that is a most natural and beautiful sentiment for you. But John and I can never forget how patient you were. A king could not have been better taken care of.”
“Everybody,” said the doctor, with fervor, “knows that. I have never known such nursing;” and in the satisfaction of sayingthis he managed to dispose of the chicken on his plate. His very consumption of it was to Madam’s credit. He could not have swallowed a morsel, but for having had the opportunity for this ascription of praise.
“And if I were you,” said Mrs. Lennox, “I would not worry myself about taking up everything so soon again. I am sure you must want a thorough rest. I wish, indeed, you would just make up your mind to come home with me, for a change would do you good. I said to poor dear Maria Heathcote, when I left her this morning, ‘My dear, you may expect me confidently to-night; unless my poor dear sister-in-law wants me. But dear Grace has, of course, the first claim upon me,’ I said. And if I were you I would not try my strength too much. You should have stayed in your room to-night, and have had a tray with something light and trifling. You don’t eat a morsel,” Aunt Sophy said, with true regret. “And Rosalind and I would have come up-stairs and sat with you. I have more experience than you have in trouble,” added the good lady with a sigh (who, indeed, “had buried two dear husbands,” as she said), “and that has always been my experience. You must not do too much at first. To-morrow is always a new day.”
“To-morrow,” Mrs. Trevanion said, “there will be many things to think of.” She lingered on the word a little, with a tremulousness which all the men felt as if it had been a knife going into their hearts. Her voice got more steady as she went on. “You must go back to school on Monday, Rex,” she said; “that will be best. You must not lose any time now, but be a man as soon as you can, for all our sakes.”
“Oh, as for being a man,” said Reginald, “that doesn’t just depend on age, mother. My tutor would rather have me for his captain than Smith, who is nineteen. He said so. It depends upon a fellow’s character.”
“That is what I think too,” she said, with a smile upon her boy. “And, Sophy, if you will take Rosalind and your godchildinstead of me, I think it will do them good. I—you may suppose I have a great many things to think of.”
“Leave them, dear, till you are stronger, that is my advice; and I know more about trouble than you do,” Mrs. Lennox said.
Mrs. Trevanion gave a glance around her. There was a faint smile upon her face. The three gentlemen sitting by did not know even that she looked at them, but they felt each like a culprit, guilty and responsible. Her eyes seemed to appeal speechlessly to earth and heaven, yet with an almost humorous consciousness of good Mrs. Lennox’s superiority in experience. “I should like Rosalind and Sophy to go with you for a change,” she said, quietly. “The little ones will be best at home. Russell is not good for Sophy, Rosalind; but for the little ones it does not matter so much. She is very kind and careful of them. That covers a multitude of sins. I think, for their sakes, she may stay.”
“I would not keep her, mamma. She is dangerous; she is wicked.”
“What do you mean by that, Rose? Russell! I should as soon think of mamma going as of Russell going,” cried Rex. “She says mamma hates her, but I say—”
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “that you do not find yourself above nursery gossip, Rex, at your age. Never mind, it is a matter to be talked of afterwards. You are not going away immediately, John?”
“Not as long as—” He paused and looked at her wistfully, with eyes that said a thousand things. “As long as I can be of use,” he said.
“As long as— I think I know what you mean,” Mrs. Trevanion said.
The conversation was full of thesesous-entendus. Except Mrs. Lennox and Rex, there was a sense of mystery and uncertainty in all the party. Rosalind followed every speaker with her eyes, inquiring what they could mean. Mrs. Trevanion wasthe most composed of the company, though meanings were found afterwards in every word she said. The servants had gone from the room while the latter part of this conversation went on. After a little while she rose, and all of them with her. She called Reginald, who followed reluctantly, feeling that he was much too important a person to retire with the ladies. As she went out, leaning upon his arm, she waved her hand to the other gentlemen. “Good-night,” she said. “I don’t think I am equal to the drawing-room to-night.”
“What do you want with me, mother? It isn’t right, it isn’t, indeed, to call me away like a child. I’m not a child; and I ought to be there to hear what they are going to settle. Don’t you see, mamma, it’s my concern?”
“You can go back presently, Rex; yes, my boy, it is your concern. I want you to think so, dear. And the little ones are your concern. Being the head of a house means a great deal. It means thinking of everything, taking care of the brothers and sisters, not only being a person of importance, Rex—”
“I know, I know. If this is all you wanted to say—”
“Almost all. That you must think of your duties, dear. It is unfortunate for you, oh, very unfortunate, to be left so young; but your Uncle John will be your true friend.”
“Well, that don’t matter much. Oh, I dare say he will be good enough. Then you know, mammy,” said the boy condescendingly, giving her a hurried kiss, and eager to get away, “when there’s anything very hard I can come and talk it over with you.”
She did not make any reply, but kissed him, holding his reluctant form close to her. He did not like to be hugged, and he wanted to be back among the men. “One moment,” she said. “Promise me you will be very good to the little ones, Rex.”
“Why, of course, mother,” said the boy; “you didn’t think I would beat them, did you? Good-night.”
“Good-bye, my own boy.” He had darted from her almost before she could withdraw her arm. She paused a moment to draw breath, and then followed to the door of the drawing-room, where the other ladies were gone. “I think, Sophy,” she said, “I will take your advice and go to my room; and you must arrange with Rosalind to take her home with you, and Sophy too.”
“That I will, with all my heart; and I don’t despair of getting you to come. Good-night, dear. Should you like me to come and sit with you a little when you have got to bed?”
“Not to-night,” said Mrs. Trevanion. “I am tired out. Good-night, Rosalind. God bless you, my darling!” She held the girl in her arms, and drew her towards the door. “I can give you no explanation about last night, and you will hear other things. Think of me as kindly as you can, my own, that are none of mine,” she said, bending over her with her eyes full of tears.
“Mother,” said the girl, flinging herself into Mrs. Trevanion’s arms with enthusiasm, “you can do no wrong.”
“God bless you, my own dear!”
This parting seemed sufficiently justified by the circumstances. The funeral day! Could it be otherwise than that their nerves were highly strung, and words of love and mutual support, which might have seemed exaggerated at other times, should now have seemed natural? Rosalind, with her heart bursting, went back to her aunt’s side, and sat down and listened to her placid talk. She would rather have been with her suffering mother, but for that worn-out woman there was nothing so good as rest.
Mrs. Trevanion went back to the nursery, where her little children were fast asleep in their cots, and Sophy preparing for bed. Sophy was still grumbling over the fact that she had not been allowed to go down to dessert. “Why shouldn’t I go down?” she cried, sitting on the floor, taking off her shoes. “Oh, here’s mamma! What difference could it have made?Grown-up people are nasty and cruel. I should not have done any harm going down-stairs. Reggie is dining down-stairs. He is always the one that is petted, because he is a boy, though he is only five years older than me.”
“Hush, Miss Sophy. It was your mamma’s doing, and mammas are always right.”
“You don’t think so, Russell. Oh, I don’t want to kiss you, mamma. It was so unkind, and Reggie going on Monday; and I have not been down to dessert—not for a week.”
“But I must kiss you, Sophy,” the mother said. “You are going away with your aunt and Rosalind, on a visit. Is not that better than coming down to dessert?”
“Oh, mamma!” The child jumped up with one shoe on, and threw herself against her mother’s breast. “Oh, I am so glad. Aunt Sophy lets us do whatever we please.” She gave a careless kiss in response to Mrs. Trevanion’s embrace. “I should like to stay there forever,” Sophy said.
There was a smile on the mother’s face as she withdrew it, as there had been a smile of strange wonder and wistfulness when she took leave of Rex. The little ones were asleep. She went and stood for a moment between the two white cots. Then all was done; and the hour had come to which, without knowing what awaited her, she had looked with so much terror on the previous night.
A dark night, with sudden blasts of rain, and a sighing wind which moaned about the house, and gave notes of warning of the dreary wintry weather to come. As Mrs. Lennox and Rosalind sat silent over the fire, there suddenly seemed to come in and pervade the luxurious house a blast, as if the night had entered bodily, a great draught of fresh, cold, odorous, rainy air, charged with the breath of the wet fields and earth. And then there was the muffled sound as of a closed door. “What is that?” said Aunt Sophy, pricking up her ears, “It cannot be visitors come so late, and on such a day as this.”
“It sounds like some one going out,” Rosalind said, with ashiver, thinking on what she had seen last night. “Perhaps,” she added eagerly, after a moment, with a great sense of relief, “Mr. Blake going away.”
“It will be that, of course, though I did not hear wheels; and what a dismal night for his drive, poor old gentleman. That wind always makes me wretched. It moans and groans like a human creature. But it is very odd, Rosalind, that we did not hear any wheels.”
“The wind drowns other sounds,” Rosalind said.
“That must be so, I suppose. Still, I hope he doesn’t think of walking, Rosalind; an old man of that age.”
And then once more all fell into silence in the great luxurious house. Outside the wind blew in the faces of the wayfarers. The rain drenched them in sudden gusts, the paths were slippery and wet, the trees discharged sharp volleys of collected rain as the blasts blew. To struggle across the park was no easy matter in the face of the blinding sleet and capricious wind; and you could not hear your voice under the trees for the din that was going on overhead.
Rosalindspent a very restless night. She could not sleep, and the rain coming down in torrents irritated her with its ceaseless pattering. She thought, she could not tell why, of the poor people who were out in it—travellers, wayfarers, poor vagrants, such as she had seen about the country roads. What would the miserable creatures do in such a dismal night? As she lay awake in the darkness she pictured them to herself, drenched and cold, dragging along the muddy ways. No one in whom she was interested was likely to be reduced to such misery, but she thought of them, she could not tell why. She had knocked at Mrs. Trevanion’s door as she came up-stairs, longing to go in to say another word, to give her a kiss in herweariness. Rosalind had an ache and terrible question in her heart which she had never been able to get rid of, notwithstanding the closeness of the intercourse on the funeral day and the exuberant profession of faith to which she had given vent: “You can do no wrong.” Her heart had cried out this protestation of faith, but in her mind there had been a terrible drawing back, like that of the wave which has dashed brilliantly upon a stony beach only to groan and turn back again, carrying everything with it. Through all this sleepless night she lay balancing between these two sensations—the enthusiasm and the doubt. Her mother! It seemed a sort of blasphemy to judge or question that highest of all human authorities—that type and impersonation of all that was best. And yet it would force itself upon her, in spite of all her holding back. Where was she going that night? Supposing the former events nothing, what, oh, what was the new-made widow going to do on the eve of her husband’s funeral out in the park, all disguised and concealed in the dusk? The more Rosalind denied her doubts expression the more bitterly did that picture force itself upon her—the veiled, muffled figure, the watching accomplice, and the door so stealthily opened. Without practice and knowledge and experience, who could have done all that? If Rosalind herself wanted to steal out quietly, a hundred hinderances started up in her way. If she tried anything of the kind she knew very well that every individual whom she wished to avoid would meet her and find her out. It is so with the innocent, but with those who are used to concealment, not so. These were the things that said themselves in her mind without any consent of hers as she labored through the night. And when the first faint sounds of waking began to be audible, a distant door opening, an indication that some one was stirring, Rosalind got up too, unable to bear it any longer. She sprang out of bed and wrapped herself in her dressing-gown, resolved to go to her mother’s room and disperse all those ghosts of night. How often had she run there in childish troubles and shaken themoff! That last court of appeal had never been closed to her. A kiss, a touch of the soft hand upon her head, a comforting word, had charmed away every spectre again and again. Perhaps Rosalind thought she would have the courage to speak all out, perhaps to have her doubts set at rest forever; but even if she had not courage for that, the mere sight of Mrs. Trevanion was enough to dispel all prejudices, to make an end of all doubts. It was quite dark in the passages as she flitted across the large opening of the stairs. Down-stairs in the great hall there was a spark of light, where a housemaid, kneeling within the great chimney, was lighting the fire. There was a certain relief even in this, in the feeling of a new day and life begun again. Rosalind glided like a ghost, in her warm dressing-gown, to Mrs. Trevanion’s door. She knocked softly, but there was no reply. Little wonder, at this hour of the morning; no doubt the mother was asleep. Rosalind opened the door.
There is a kind of horror of which it is difficult to give any description in the sensations of one who goes into a room expecting to find a sleeper in the safety and calm of natural repose and finds it empty, cold, and vacant. The shock is extraordinary. The certainty that the inhabitant must be there is so profound, and in a moment is replaced by an uncertainty which nothing can equal—a wild dread that fears it knows not what, but always the worst that can be feared. Rosalind went in with the soft yet confident step of a child, who knows that the mother will wake at a touch, almost at a look, and turn with a smile and a kiss to listen, whatever the story that is brought to her may be. Fuller confidence never was. She did not even look before going straight to the bedside. She had, indeed, knelt down there before she found out. Then she sprang to her feet again with the cry of one who had touched death unawares. It was like death to her, the touch of the cold, smooth linen, all folded as it had been in preparation for the inmate—who was to sleep there no more. She looked round the room as if asking an answer from every corner. “Mother,where are you? Mother! Where are you, mother?” she cried, with a wild voice of astonishment and dismay.
There was no light in the room; a faint paleness to show the window, a silence that was terrible, an atmosphere as of death itself. Rosalind flew, half frantic, into the dressing-room adjoining, which for some time past had been occupied by Jane. There a night-light which had been left burning flickered feebly, on the point of extinction. The faint light showed the same vacancy—the bed spread in cold order, everything empty, still. Rosalind felt her senses giving way. Her impulse was to rush out through the house, calling, asking, Where were they? Death seemed to be in the place—death more mysterious and more terrible than that with which she had been made familiar. After a pause she left the room and hurried breathless to that occupied by her uncle. How different there was the atmosphere, charged with human breath, warm with occupation. She burst in, too terrified for thought.
“Uncle John!” she cried, “Uncle John!” taking him by the shoulder.
It was not easy to wake him out of his deep sleep. At last he sat up in his bed, half awake, and looked at her with consternation.
“Rosalind! what is the matter?” he cried.
“Mamma is not in her room—where is she, where is she?” the girl demanded, standing over him like a ghost in the dark.
“Your mother is not— I—I suppose she’s tired, like all the rest of us,” he said, with a sleepy desire to escape this premature awakening. “Why, it’s dark still, Rosalind. Go back to bed, my dear. Your mother—”
“Listen, Uncle John. Mamma is not in her room. No one has slept there to-night; it is all empty; my mother is gone, is gone! Where has she gone?” the girl cried, wildly. “She has not been there all night.”
“Good God!” John Trevanion cried. He was entirely roused now. “Rosalind, you must be making some mistake.”
“There is no mistake. I thought perhaps you might know something. No one has slept there to-night. Oh, Uncle John, Uncle John, where is my mother? Let us go and find her before everybody knows.”
“Rosalind, leave me, and I will get up. I can tell you nothing—yes, I can tell you something; but I never thought it would be like this. It is your father who has sent her away.”
“Papa!” the girl cried; “oh, Uncle John, stop before you have taken everything away from me; neither father nor mother!—you take everything from me!” she said, with a cry of despair.
“Go away,” he said, “and get dressed, Rosalind, and then we can see whether there is anything to be done.”
An hour later they stood together by the half-kindled fire in the hall. John Trevanion had gone through the empty rooms with his niece, who was distracted, not knowing what she did. By this time a pale and gray daylight, which looked like cold and misery made visible, had diffused itself through the great house. That chill visibleness, showing all the arrangements of the room prepared for rest and slumber, where nobody had slept, had something terrible in it that struck them both with awe. There was no letter, no sign to be found of leave-taking. When they opened the wardrobe and drawers, a few dresses and necessaries were found to be gone, and it appeared that Jane had sent two small boxes to the village which she had represented to be old clothes, “colored things,” for which her mistress would now have no need. It was to Rosalind like a blow in the dark, a buffet from some ghostly hand, additional to her other pain, when she found it was these “colored things” and not the prepared, newly made mourning which her stepmother had taken with her. This seemed a cutting off from them, an entire abandonment, which made her misery deeper; but naturally John Trevanion did not think of that. He told her the story of the will while they stood together inthe hall. But he could think of nothing to do, nor could he give any hope that this terrible event was a thing to be undone or concealed. “It must have happened,” he said, “sooner or later; and though it is a shock—a great shock—”
“Oh, Uncle John, it is—there was never anything so terrible. How can you use ordinary words? A shock! If the wind had blown down a tree it would be a shock. Don’t you see, it is the house that has been blown down? we have nothing—nothing to shelter us, we children. My mother and my father! We are orphans, and far, far worse than orphans. We having nothing left but shame—nothing but shame!”
“Rosalind, it is worse for the others than for you. You, at least, are clear of it; she is not your mother.”
“She is all the mother I have ever known,” Rosalind cried for the hundredth time. “And,” she added, with quivering lips, “I am the daughter of the man who on his death-bed has brought shame upon his own, and disgraced the wife that was like an angel to him. If the other could be got over, that can never be got over. He did it, and he cannot undo it. And she is wicked too. She should not have yielded like that; she should have resisted—she should have refused; she should not have gone away.”
“Had she done so it would have been our duty to insist upon it,” said John Trevanion, sadly. “We had no alternative. You will find when you think it over that this sudden going is for the best.”
“Oh, that is so easy to say when it is not your heart that is wrung, but some one else’s; and how can it ever be,” cried Rosalind, with a dismal logic which many have employed before her, “that what is all wrong from beginning to end can be for the best?”
This was the beginning of a day more miserable than words can describe. They made no attempt to conceal the calamity; it was impossible to conceal it. The first astounded and terror-stricken housemaid who entered the room spread it overthe house like wildfire. Madam had gone away. Madam had not slept in her bed all night. When Rosalind, who could not rest, made one of her many aimless journeys up-stairs, she heard a wail from the nurseries, and Russell, rushing out, suddenly confronted her. The woman was pale with excitement; and there was a mixture of compunction and triumph and horror in her eyes.
“What does this mean, Miss Rosalind? Tell me, for God’s sake!” she cried.
It did Rosalind a little good in her misery to find herself in front of an actor in this catastrophe; one who was guilty and could be made to suffer. “It means,” she cried, with sudden rage, “that you must leave my mother’s children at once—this very moment! My uncle will give you your wages, whatever you want, but you shall not stay here, not an hour.”
“My wages!” the woman cried, with a sort of scream; “do I care for wages? Leave my babies, as I have brought up? Oh, never, never! You may say what you please, you that were always unnatural, that held for her instead of your own flesh and blood. You are cruel, cruel; but I won’t stand it— I won’t. There’s more to be consulted, Miss Rosalind, than you.”
“I would be more cruel if I could— I would strike you,” cried the impassioned girl, clinching her small hands, “if it were not a shame for a lady to do it—you, who have taken away mother from me and made me hate and despise my own father, oh, God forgive me! And it is your doing, you miserable woman. Let me never see you again. To see you is like death to me. Go away—go away!”
“And yet I was better than a mother to you once,” said Russell, who had cried out and put her hand to her heart as if she had received a blow. Her heart was tender to her nursling, though pitiless otherwise. “I saved your life,” she cried, beginning to weep; “I took you when your true mother died. You would have loved me but for that woman—that—”
Rosalind stamped her foot passionately upon the floor; she was transported by misery and wrath. “Do not dare to speak to me! Go away—go out of the house. Uncle John,” she cried, hurrying to the balustrade and looking down into the hall where he stood, too wretched to observe what was going on, “will you come and turn this woman away?”
He came slowly up-stairs at this call, with his hands in his pockets, every line of his figure expressing despondency and dismay. It was only when he came in sight of Russell, flushed, crying, and injured, yet defiant too, that he understood what Rosalind meant by the appeal. “Yes, it will be well that you should go,” he said. “You have made mischief that never can be mended. No one in this house will ever forgive you. The best thing you can do is to go—”
“The mischief was not my making,” cried Russell. “It’s not them that tells but them that goes wrong that are to blame. And the children—there’s the children to think of—who will take care of them like me? I’d die sooner than leave the children. They’re the same as my flesh and blood. They have been in my hands since ever they were born,” the woman cried with passion. “Oh, Mr. Trevanion, you that have always been known for a kind gentleman, let me stay with the children! Their mother, she can desert them, but I can’t; it will break my heart.”
“You had better go,” said John Trevanion, with lowering brows. At this moment Reginald appeared on the scene from another direction, pulling on his jacket in great hurry and excitement. “What does it all mean?” the boy cried, full of agitation. “Oh, if it’s only Russell! They told me some story about— Why are you bullying Russell, Uncle John?”
“Oh, Mr. Reginald, you’ll speak for me. You are my own boy, and you are the real master. Don’t let them break my heart,” cried Russell, holding out her imploring hands.
“Oh, if it’s only Russell,” the boy cried, relieved; “but they said—they told me—”
Another door opened as he spoke, and Aunt Sophy, dishevelled, the gray locks falling about her shoulders, a dressing-gown huddled about her ample figure, appeared suddenly. “For God’s sake, speak low! What does it all mean? Don’t expose everything to the servants, whatever it is,” she cried.
Presentlythey all assembled in the hall—a miserable party. The door of the breakfast-room stood open, but no one went near it. They stood in a knot, all huddled together, speaking almost in whispers. Considering that everybody in the house now knew that Madam had never been in bed at all, that she must have left Highcourt secretly in the middle of the night, no precaution could have been more foolish. But Mrs. Lennox had not realized this; and her anxiety to silence scandal was extreme. She stood quite close to her brother, questioning him. “But what do you mean? How could Reginald do it? What did he imagine? And, oh! couldn’t you put a stop to it, for the sake of the family, John?”
Young Reginald stood on the other side, confused between anger and ignorance, incapacity to understand and a desire to blame some one. “What does she mean by it?” he said. “What did father mean by it? Was it just to make us all as wretched as possible—as if things weren’t bad enough before?” It was impossible to convey to either of them any real understanding of the case. “But how could he part the children from their mother?” said Aunt Sophy. “She is their mother, their mother; not their stepmother. You forget, John; she’s Rosalind’s stepmother. Rosalind might have been made my ward; that would have been natural; but the others are her own. How could he separate her from her own? She ought not to have left them! Oh, how could she leave them?” the bewildered woman cried.
“If she had not done it the children would have been destitute, Sophy. It was my business to make her do it, unless she had been willing to ruin the children.”
“Not me,” cried Reginald, loudly. “He could not have taken anything from me. She might have stuck to me, and I should have taken care of her. What had she to be frightened about? I suppose,” he added after a pause, “there would have been plenty—to keep all the children too—”
“Highcourt is not such a very large estate, Rex. Lowdean and the rest are unentailed. You would have been much impoverished too.”
“Oh!” Reginald cried, with an angry frown; but then he turned to another side of the question, and continued vehemently, “Why on earth, when she knew papa was so cranky and had it all in his power, why did she aggravate him? I think they must all have been mad together, and just tried how to spite us most!” cried the boy, with a rush of passionate tears to his eyes. The house was miserable altogether. He wanted his breakfast, and he had no heart to eat it. He could not bear the solemn spying of the servants. Dorrington, in particular, would come to the door of the breakfast-room and look in with an expression of mysterious sympathy for which Reginald would have liked to kill him. “I wish I had never come away from school at all. I wish I were not going back. I wish I were anywhere out of this,” he cried. But he did not suggest again that his mother should have “stuck to” him. He wanted to know why somebody did not interfere; why this thing and the other was permitted to be done. “Some one could have stopped it if they had tried,” Reginald said; and that was Aunt Sophy’s opinion too.
The conclusion of all was that Mrs. Lennox left Highcourt with the children and Rosalind as soon as their preparations could be made, by way of covering as well as possible the extraordinary revolution in the house. It was the only expedient any of these distracted people could think of to throw alittle illusion over Mrs. Trevanion’s abrupt departure. Of course they were all aware everything must be known. What is there that is not known? And to think that a large houseful of servants would keep silent on such a piece of family history was past all expectation. No doubt it was already known through the village and spreading over the neighborhood. “Madam” had been caught meeting some man in the park when her husband was ill, poor gentleman! And now, the very day of the funeral, she was off with the fellow, and left all her children, and everything turned upside down. The older people all knew exactly what would be said, and they knew that public opinion would think the worst, that no explanations would be allowed, that the vulgarest, grossest interpretation would be so much easier than anything else, so ready, so indisputable—she had gone away with her lover. Mrs. Lennox herself could not help thinking so in the depths of her mind, though on the surface she entertained other vague and less assured ideas. What else could explain it? Everybody knew the force of passion, the way in which women will forsake everything, even their children, even their homes—that was comprehensible, though so dreadful. But nothing else was comprehensible. Aunt Sophy, in the depth of her heart, though she was herself an innocent woman, was not sure that John was not inventing, to shield his sister-in-law, that incredible statement about the will. She felt that she herself would say anything for the same purpose—she would not mind what it was—anything rather than that Grace, a woman they had all thought so much of, had “gone wrong” in such a dreadful way. Nevertheless it was far more comprehensible that she had “gone wrong” than any other explanation could be. Though she had been a woman upon whom no breath of scandal had ever come, a woman who overawed evil speakers, and was above all possibility of reproach, yet it was always possible that she might have “gone wrong.” Against such hazards there could be no defence. But Mrs. Lennox was very willingto do anything to cover up the family trouble. She even went the length of speaking somewhat loudly to her own maid, in the hearing of some of the servants of the house, about Mrs. Trevanion’s “early start.” “We shall catch her up on the way,” Mrs. Lennox said. “I don’t wonder, do you, Morris, that she went by that early train? Poor dear! I remember when I lost my first dear husband I couldn’t bear the sight of the house and the churchyard where he was lying. But we shall catch her up,” the kind-hearted hypocrite said, drying her eyes. As if the housemaids were to be taken in so easily! as if they did not know far more than Mrs. Lennox did, who thus lent herself to a falsehood! When the children came down, dressed in their black frocks, with eyes wide open and full of eager curiosity, Mrs. Lennox was daunted by the cynical air with which Sophy, her namesake and godchild, regarded her. “You needn’t say anything to me about catching up mamma, for I know better,” the child said, vindictively. “She likes somebody else better than us, and she has just gone away.”
“Rosalind,” Mrs. Lennox cried, in dismay, “I hope that woman is not coming with us, that horrible woman that puts such things into the children’s heads. I hope you have sent Russell away.”
But when the little ones were all packed in the carriage with their aunt, who could not endure to see any one cry, there was a burst of simultaneous weeping. “I neber love nobody but Nana. I do to nobody but Nana,” little Johnny shouted. His little sister said nothing, but her small mouth quivered, and the piteous aspect of her face, struggling against a passion of restrained grief, was the most painful of all. Sophy, however, continued defiant. “You may send her away, but me and Reginald will have her back again,” she said. Aunt Sophy could scarcely have been more frightened had she taken a collection of bombshells with her into the carriage. The absence of mamma was little to the children, who had been somuch separated from her by their father’s long illness; but Russell, the “Nana” of their baby affections, had a closer hold.
With these rebellious companions, and with all the misery of the family tragedy overshadowing her, Rosalind made the journey more sadly than any of the party. At times it seemed impossible for her to believe that all the miseries that had happened were real. Was it not rather a dream from which she might awaken, and find everything as of old? To think that she should be leaving her home, feeling almost a fugitive, hastily, furtively, in order to cover the flight of one who had been her type of excellence all her life: to think that father and mother were both gone from her—gone out of her existence, painfully, miserably; not to be dwelt upon with tender grief, such as others had the privilege of enduring, but with bitter anguish and shame. The wails of the children as they grew tired with the journey, the necessity of taking the responsibility of them upon herself, hushing the cries of the little ones for “Nana,” silencing Sophy, who was disposed to be impertinent, keeping the weight of the party from the too susceptible shoulders of the aunt, made a complication and interruption of her thoughts which Rosalind was too inexperienced to feel as an alleviation, and which made a fantastic mixture of tragedy and burlesque in her mind. She had to think of the small matters of the journey, and to satisfy Aunt Sophy’s fears as to the impossibility of getting the other train at the junction, and the risk of losing the luggage, and to persuade her that Johnny’s restlessness, his refusal to be comforted by the anxious nursery-maid, and wailing appeals for Russell, would wear off by and by as baby-heartbreaks do. “But I have known a child fret itself to death,” Mrs. Lennox cried. “I have heard of instances in which they would not be comforted, Rosalind; and what should we do if the child was to pine, and perhaps to die?” Rosalind, so young, so little experienced, was overwhelmed by this suggestion. She took Johnny upon her ownlap, and attempted to soothe him, with a sense that she might turn out a kind of murderer if the child did not mend. It was consolatory to feel that, warmly wrapped, and supported against her young bosom, Johnny got sleepy, and moaned himself into oblivion of his troubles. But this was not so pleasant when they came to the junction, and Rosalind had to stumble out of the carriage somehow, and hurry to the waiting train with poor little Johnny’s long legs thrust out from her draperies. It was at this moment, as she got out, that she saw a face in the crowd which gave her a singular thrill in the midst of her trouble. The wintry afternoon was falling into darkness, the vast, noisy place was swarming with life and tumult. She had to walk a little slower than the rest on account of her burden, which she did not venture to give into other arms, in case the child should wake. It was the face of the young man whom she had met in the park—the stranger, so unlike anybody else, about whom she had been so uncomfortably uncertain whether he was or not— But what did that matter? If he had been a prince of the blood or the lowest adventurer, what was it to Rosalind? Her mind was full of other things, and no man in the world had a right to waylay her, to follow her, to trace her movements. It made her hot and red with personal feeling in the midst of all the trouble that surrounded her. He had no right—no right; and yet the noblest lover who ever haunted his lady’s window to see her shadow on the blind had no right; and perhaps, if put into vulgar words, Romeo had no right to scale that wall, and Juliet on her balcony was a forward young woman. There are things which are not to be defended by any rule, which youth excuses, nay, justifies; and to see a pair of sympathetic eyes directed towards her through the crowd—eyes that found her out amid all that multitude—touched Rosalind’s heart. Somehow they made her trouble, and even the weight of her little brother, who was heavy, more easy to bear. She was weak and worn out, and this it was, perhaps, which made herso easily moved. But the startled sensation with which she heard a voice at her side, somewhat too low and too close, saying, “Will you let me carry the child for you, Miss Trevanion?” whirled the softer sensation away into eddies of suspicion and dark thrills of alarm and doubt. “Oh, no, no!” she cried, instinctively hurrying on.
“I ask nothing but to relieve you,” he said.
“Oh, thanks! I am much obliged to you, but it is impossible. It would wake him,” she said hurriedly, not looking up.
“You think me presumptuous, Miss Trevanion, and so I am; but it is terrible to see you so burdened and not be able to help.”
This made her burden so much the more that Rosalind quickened her steps, and stumbled and almost fell. “Oh, please,” she said, “go away. You may mean to be kind. Oh, please go away.”
The nursery-maid, who came back at Mrs. Lennox’s orders to help Rosalind, saw nothing particular to remark, except that the young lady was flushed and disturbed. But to hurry along a crowded platform with a child in your arms was enough to account for that. The maid could very well appreciate such a drawback to movement. She succeeded, with the skill of her profession, in taking the child into her own arms, and repeated Mrs. Lennox’s entreaties to make haste. But Rosalind required no solicitation in this respect. She made a dart forward, and was in the carriage in a moment, where she threw herself into a seat and hid her face in her hands.
“I knew it would be too much for you,” said Aunt Sophy, soothingly. “Oh, Thirza is used to it. I pity nurses with all my heart; but they are used to it. But you, my poor darling, in such a crowd! Did you think we should miss the train? I know what that is—to hurry along, and yet be sure you will miss it. Here, Thirza, here; we are all right; and afterall there is plenty of time.” After a pause Aunt Sophy said, “I wonder who that is looking so intently into this carriage. Such a remarkable face! But I hope he does not mean to get in here; we are quite full here. Rosalind, you look like nothing at all in that corner, in your black dress. He will think the seat is vacant and come in if you don’t make a little more appearance. Rosalind— Good gracious, I believe she has fainted!”
“No, Aunt Sophy.” Rosalind raised her head and uncovered her pale face. She knew that she should see that intruder looking at her. He seemed to be examining the carriages, looking for a place, and as she took her hands from her face their eyes met. There was that unconscious communication between them which betrays those who recognize each other, whether they make any sign or not. Aunt Sophy gave a wondering cry.
“Why, you know him! and yet he does not take his hat off. Who is it, Rosalind?”
“I have seen him—in the village—”
“Oh, I know,” cried little Sophy, pushing forward. “It is the gentleman. I have seen him often. He lived at the Red Lion. Don’t you remember, Rosalind, the gentleman that mamma wouldn’t let me—”
“Oh, Sophy, be quiet!” cried the girl. What poignant memories awoke with the words!
“But how strange he looks,” cried Sophy. “His hat down over his eyes, and I believe he has got a beard or something—”
“You must not run on like that. I dare say it is quite a different person,” said Aunt Sophy. “What made me notice him is that he has eyes exactly like little Johnny’s eyes.”
It was one of Aunt Sophy’s weaknesses that she was always finding out likenesses; but Rosalind’s mind was disturbed by another form of her original difficulty about the stranger. It might be forgiven him that he hung about her path, and even followed at a distance; it was excusable that he should ask ifhe could help her with the child; but having thus ventured to accost her, and having established a sort of acquaintance by being useful to her, why, when their eyes met, did he make no sign of recognition? No, he could not be a gentleman! Then Rosalind awoke with horror to find that on the very first day after all the calamities that had befallen her family she was able to discuss such a question with herself.
John Trevanionremained in the empty house. It had seemed that morning as if nothing could be more miserable: but it was more miserable now, when every cheerful element had gone out of it, and not even the distant sound of a child’s voice, or Rosalind’s dress, with its faint sweep of sound, was to be heard in the vacancy. After he had seen them off he walked home through the village with a very heavy heart. In front of the little inn there was an unusual stir: a number of rustic people gathered about the front of the house, surrounding two men of an aspect not at all rustical, who were evidently questioning the slow but eager rural witnesses. “It must ha’ been last night as he went,” said one. “I don’t know when he went,” said another, “but he never come in to his supper, I’ll take my oath o’ that.” They all looked somewhat eagerly towards John, who felt himself compelled to interfere, much as he disliked doing so. “What is the matter?” he asked, and then from half a dozen eager mouths the story rushed out. “A gentleman” had been living at the Red Lion for some time back. Nobody, it appeared, could make out what he wanted there; everybody (they now said) suspected him from the first. He would lie in bed all morning, and then get up towards afternoon. Nothing more was necessary to demonstrate his immorality, the guilt of the man. He went out trapesing in the woods at night, but he wasn’t no poacher, for he neverseemed to handle a gun nor know aught about it. He would turn white when anybody came in and tried a trigger, or to see if the ball was drawn. No, he wasn’t no poacher: but he did always be in the woods o’ night, which meant no good, the rustics thought. There were whisperings aside, and glances, as this description was given, which were not lost upon John, but his attention was occupied in the first place by the strangers, who came forward and announced that they were detectives in search of an offender, a clerk in a merchant’s office, who had absconded, having squandered a considerable sum of his master’s money. “But this is an impossible sort of place for such a culprit to have taken refuge in,” John said, astounded. The chief of the two officers stepped out in front of the other, and asked if he might say a few words to the gentleman, then went on accompanying John, as he mechanically continued his way, repressing all appearance of the extraordinary commotion thus produced in his mind.
“You see, sir,” said the man, “it’s thought that the young fellow had what you may call a previous connection here.”
“Ah! was he perhaps related to some one in the village? I never heard his name.” (The name was Everard, and quite unknown to the neighborhood.)
“No, Mr. Trevanion,” said the other, significantly, “not in the village.”
“Where, then—what do you mean? What could the previous connection that brought him here be?”
The man took a pocket-book from his pocket, and produced a crumpled envelope. “You may have seen this writing before, sir,” he said.
John took it with a thrill of pain and alarm, recognizing the paper, the stamp of “Highcourt,” torn but decipherable on the seal, and feeling himself driven to one conclusion which he would fain have pushed from him; but when he had smoothed it out, with a hand which trembled in spite of himself, he suddenly cried out, with a start of overwhelming surprise and relief,“Why, it is my brother’s hand!”
“Your brother’s?” cried the officer, with a blank look. “You mean, sir, the gentleman that was buried yesterday?”
“My brother, Mr. Trevanion, of Highcourt. I do not know how he can have been connected with the person you seek. It must have been some accidental link. I have already told you I never heard the name.”
The man was as much confused and startled as John himself. “If that’s so,” he said, “you have put us off the track, and I don’t know now what to do. We had heard,” he added, with a sidelong look of vigilant observation, “that there was a lady in the case.”
“I know nothing about any lady,” said John Trevanion, briefly.
“There’s no trusting to village stories, sir. We were told that a lady had disappeared, and that it was more than probable—”
“As you say, village stories are entirely untrustworthy,” said John. “I can throw no light on the subject, except that the address on the envelope (Everard, is it?) is in my brother’s hand. He might, of course, have a hundred correspondents unknown to me, but I certainly never heard of this one. I suppose there is no more I can do for you, for I am anxious to get back to Highcourt. You have heard, no doubt, that the family is in deep mourning and sorrow.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said the official, “and distressed to have interrupted you at such a moment, but it is our duty to leave no stone unturned.” Then he lingered for a moment. “I suppose, then,” he said, “there is no truth in the story about the lady—”
John turned upon him with a short laugh. “You don’t expect me, I hope, to answer for all the village stories about ladies,” he said, waving his hand as he went on. “I have told you all I know.”
He quickened his pace and his companion fell back. Butthe officer was not satisfied, and John Trevanion went on, with his mind in a dark and hopeless confusion, not knowing what extraordinary addition of perplexity was added to the question by this new piece of evidence, but feeling vaguely that it increased the darkness all around him. He had not in any way associated the stranger whom he had met on the road with his sister-in-law. He had thought it likely enough that the young man, perhaps of pretensions too humble to get admittance at Highcourt, had lingered about in foolish youthful adoration of Rosalind, which, however presumptuous it might be, was natural enough. To hear now that the young man who had presumed to do Miss Trevanion a service was a criminal in hiding made his blood boil. But his brother’s handwriting threw everything into confusion. How did this connect with the rest, what light did it throw upon the imbroglio, in what way could it be connected with the disappearance of Madam? All these things surged about him vaguely as he walked, but he could make nothing coherent, no rational whole out of them. The park and the trees lay in a heavy mist. The day was not cold, but stifling, with a low sky, and heavy vapors in the air, everything around wet, sodden, dreary. Never had the long stretches of turf and distant glades of trees seemed to him so lonely, so deserted and forsaken. There was not a movement to be seen, nobody coming by that public pathway which had been so great a grievance to the Trevanions for generations back. John, though he shared the family feeling in this respect, would have gladly now seen a village procession moving along the contested path. The house seemed to him to lie in a cold enclosure of mist and damp, abandoned by everybody, a spot on which there was a curse. But this, of course, was merely fanciful; and he shook off the feeling. There was pain enough involved in its recent history without the aid of imagination.
There was plenty to do, however. Mr. Trevanion’s papers had to be put in order, his personal affairs wound up; and it was almost better to have no interruption in this duty, and soget over it as quickly as possible. There is something dreadful under all circumstances in fulfilling this office. To examine into the innermost recesses in which a man has kept his treasures, his most intimate possessions, the records, perhaps, of his affections and ambitions; to open his desk, to pull out his drawers, to turn over the letters which, perhaps, to him were sacred, never to be revealed to any eye but his own, is an office from which it is natural to shrink. The investigator feels himself a spy, taking advantage of the pathetic helplessness of the dead, their powerlessness to protect themselves. John Trevanion sat down in the library with the sense of intrusion strong upon him, yet with a certain painful curiosity too. He was afraid of discovering something. At every new harmless paper which he opened he drew a long breath of relief. The papers of recent times were few—they were chiefly on the subject of money, the investments which had been made, appeals for funds sent to him for the needs of the estate, for repairs and improvements, which it was evident Mr. Trevanion had been slow to yield to. It seemed from the letters addressed to him that most of his business had been managed through his wife, which was a fact his brother was aware of; but somehow the constant reference to her, and the evident position assigned to her as in reality the active agency in the whole, added a curious and bewildering pang to the confusion in which all this had closed. It seemed beyond belief that this woman, who had stood by her husband so faithfully, his nurse, his adviser, his agent, his eyes and ears, should be now a sort of fugitive, under the dead man’s ban, separated from all she cared for in the world. John stopped in the middle of a bundle of letters to ask himself whether he had ever known a similar case. There was nothing like it in the law reports, nothing even in thosecauses célèbreswhich include so many wonders. A woman with everything in her hands, her husband’s business as well as his health, and the governance of her great household, suddenly turned away from it without reason given or any explanation—surely the man musthave been mad—surely he must have been mad! It was the only solution that seemed possible. But then there arose before the thinker’s troubled vision those scenes which had preceded his brother’s death—the bramble upon her dress, the wet feet which she had avowed, with—was it a certain bravado? And again, that still more dreadful moment in the park, on the eve of her husband’s funeral, when he had himself seen her meet and talk with some one who was invisible in the shadow of the copse. He had seen it, there could be no question on the subject. What did it mean? He got up, feeling the moisture rise to his forehead in the conflict of his feelings; he could not sit still and go for the hundredth time over this question. What did it mean?
While he was walking up and down the library, unable to settle to any examination of those calm business papers in which no agitation was, a letter was brought to him. It bore the stamp of a post-town at a short distance, and he turned it over listlessly enough, until it occurred to him that the writing was that of his sister-in-law. Madam wrote as many women write; there was nothing remarkable about her hand. John Trevanion opened the letter with excitement. It was as follows: