“Dear Brother John,—You may not wish me to call you so now, but I have always felt towards you so, and it still seems a link to those I have left behind to have one relationship which I may claim. There seems no reason why I should not write to you, or why I should conceal from you where I am. You will not seek to bring me back; I am safe enough in your hands. I am going out of England, but if you want to communicate with me on any subject, the bankers will always know where I am. It is, as I said, an additional humiliation in my great distress that I must take the provision my husband has made, and cannot fling it back to you indignantly as a younger woman might. I am old enough to know, and bitterly acknowledge, that I cannot hope to maintain myself; and I have others dependent on me. This necessity will always make it easy enough to find me, but I do not fear that you will wish to seek me out or bring me back.“I desire you to know that I understand my husband’s will better than any one else, and perhaps, knowing his nature, blame him less than you will be disposed to do. When he married me I was very forlorn and miserable. I had a story, which is the saddest thing that can be said of a woman. He was generous to me then in every particular but one, but that one was very important. I had to make a sacrifice, an unjustifiable sacrifice, and a promise which was unnatural. Herein lies my fault. I have not kept that promise; I could not; it was more than flesh and blood was capable of; and I deceived him. I was always aware that if he discovered it he might, and probably would, take summary vengeance. Now he has discovered it, and he has done without ruth what he promised me to do if I broke my word to him. I deserve it, you see, though not in the way the vulgar will suppose. To them I cannot explain, and circumstances, alas, make it impossible for me to be explicit even with you. But perhaps, even in writing so much, you may be delivered from some suspicions of me which, if I read you right, you will be glad to find are not justified.“Farewell, dear John; if we ever should meet in this world—if I should ever be cleared— I cannot tell—most likely not—my children will grow up without knowing me; but I dare not think on that subject, much less say anything. God bless them! Be as much a father to them as you can, and let my Rosalind have the letter I enclose; it will do her no harm: anyhow, she would not believe harm of me, even though she saw what looked like harm. Pity me a little, John. I have taken my doom quietly because I have no hope—neither in what I leave nor in what I go to is there any hope.Grace Trevanion.”
“Dear Brother John,—You may not wish me to call you so now, but I have always felt towards you so, and it still seems a link to those I have left behind to have one relationship which I may claim. There seems no reason why I should not write to you, or why I should conceal from you where I am. You will not seek to bring me back; I am safe enough in your hands. I am going out of England, but if you want to communicate with me on any subject, the bankers will always know where I am. It is, as I said, an additional humiliation in my great distress that I must take the provision my husband has made, and cannot fling it back to you indignantly as a younger woman might. I am old enough to know, and bitterly acknowledge, that I cannot hope to maintain myself; and I have others dependent on me. This necessity will always make it easy enough to find me, but I do not fear that you will wish to seek me out or bring me back.
“I desire you to know that I understand my husband’s will better than any one else, and perhaps, knowing his nature, blame him less than you will be disposed to do. When he married me I was very forlorn and miserable. I had a story, which is the saddest thing that can be said of a woman. He was generous to me then in every particular but one, but that one was very important. I had to make a sacrifice, an unjustifiable sacrifice, and a promise which was unnatural. Herein lies my fault. I have not kept that promise; I could not; it was more than flesh and blood was capable of; and I deceived him. I was always aware that if he discovered it he might, and probably would, take summary vengeance. Now he has discovered it, and he has done without ruth what he promised me to do if I broke my word to him. I deserve it, you see, though not in the way the vulgar will suppose. To them I cannot explain, and circumstances, alas, make it impossible for me to be explicit even with you. But perhaps, even in writing so much, you may be delivered from some suspicions of me which, if I read you right, you will be glad to find are not justified.
“Farewell, dear John; if we ever should meet in this world—if I should ever be cleared— I cannot tell—most likely not—my children will grow up without knowing me; but I dare not think on that subject, much less say anything. God bless them! Be as much a father to them as you can, and let my Rosalind have the letter I enclose; it will do her no harm: anyhow, she would not believe harm of me, even though she saw what looked like harm. Pity me a little, John. I have taken my doom quietly because I have no hope—neither in what I leave nor in what I go to is there any hope.
Grace Trevanion.”
This letter forced tears, such as a man is very slow to shed, to John Trevanion’s eyes; but there was in reality no explanation in it, no light upon the family catastrophe, or the confusion of misery and perplexity she had left behind.
“Haveyou ever noticed in your walks, doctor, a young fellow?—you couldn’t but remark him—a sort ofprimo tenore, big eyed, pale faced—”
“All pulmonary,” said Dr. Beaton. “I know the man you mean. He has been hanging about for a month, more or less, with no visible object. To tell the truth—”
John Trevanion raised his hand instinctively. “I find,” he said, interrupting with a hurried precaution, “that he has been in hiding for some offence, and men have come after him here because of an envelope with the Highcourt stamp—”
Here Dr. Beaton began, with a face of regret, yet satisfaction, to nod his head, with that offensive air of “I knew it all the time,” which is more exasperating than any other form of remark.
“The Highcourt stamp,” continued Trevanion, peremptorily, “and a direction written in my poor brother’s hand.”
“In your brother’s hand!”
“I thought I should surprise you,” John said, with a grim satisfaction. “I suppose it is according to the rules of the profession that so much time should have been let slip. I am very glad of it, for my part. Whatever Reginald can have had to do with the fellow—something accidental, no doubt—it would have been disagreeable to have his name mixed up— I saw the man myself trying to make himself agreeable to Rosalind.”
“To Miss Trevanion?” cried the doctor, with evident dismay. “Why, I thought—”
“Oh, it was a very simple matter,” said John, interrupting again. “He laid down some planks for her to cross the floods.And the recompense she gave him was to doubt whether he was a gentleman, because he had paid her a compliment—which I must say struck me as a very modest attempt at a compliment.”
“It was a tremendous piece of presumption,” said the doctor, with Scotch warmth. “I don’t doubt Miss Rosalind’s instinct was right, and that he was no gentleman. He had not the air of it, in my opinion—a limp, hollow-eyed, phthisical subject.”
“But consumption does not spare even the cream of society, doctor. It appears he must have had warning of the coming danger, for he seems to have got away.”
“I thought as much!” said Dr. Beaton. “I never expected to see more of him after— Oh, I thought as much!”
John Trevanion eyed the doctor with a look that was almost threatening, but he said nothing more. Dr. Beaton, too, was on the eve of departure; his occupation was gone, and histête-à-têtewith John Trevanion not very agreeable to either of them. But the parting was friendly on all sides. “The doctor do express himself very nicely,” Dorrington said, when he joined the company in the housekeeper’s room, after having solemnly served the two gentlemen at dinner, “about his stay having been agreeable and all that—just what a gentleman ought to say. There are medical men of all kinds, just as there are persons of all sorts in domestic service; and the doctor, he’s one of the right sort.”
“And a comfort, whatever ailed one, to know there was a doctor in the house, and as you’d be right done by,” the housekeeper said, which was the general view in the servants’ hall. These regions were, as may be supposed, deeply agitated. Russell, one of the most important among them, had been sent forth weeping and vituperating, and the sudden departure of the family had left the household free to make every commentary, possible and impossible. Needless to say that Madam’s disappearance had but one explanation among them. In all circles the question would have been so decided by the majority;in the servants’ hall there was unanimity; no one was bold enough to make a different suggestion, and had it been made it would have been laughed to scorn. There were various stories told about her supposed lover, and several different suppositions current. Gentlemen of different appearances had been seen about the park by different spectators, and men in careful disguises had even been admitted into the house, some were certain. That new man who came to wind the clocks! Why should a new man have been sent? And he had white hands, altogether unlike the hands of one who worked for his living. The young man who had lived at the Red Lion was not left out of the suspicions of the house, but he had not so important a place there as he had in the mind, for example, of Dr. Beaton, who had, with grief and pain, but now not without a certain satisfaction, concluded upon his identity. The buzz and talk, and the whirl of suppositions and real or imaginary evidence, made a sort of reverberation through the house. Now and then, when doors were open and the household off their guard, which, occurred not unfrequently in the extraordinary calm and leisure, the sounds of the eager voices were heard even as far as the library, in which John Trevanion sat with his papers, and sometimes elicited from him a furious message full of bitterness and wrath. “Can’t you keep your subordinates quiet and your doors shut,” he said to Dorrington, “instead of leaving them to disturb me with their infernal clatter and gossip?” “I will see to it, sir,” said Dorrington, with dignity; “but as for what goes on in the servants’ ’all, I ’ear it only as you ’ear it yourself, sir.” John bade the over-fine butler to go to—a personage who need not be named, to whom very fine persons go; and went on with his papers with a consciousness of all that was being said, the flutter of endless talk which before now must have blown abroad over all the country, and the false conclusions that would be formed. He could not publish her letter in the same way—her letter, which said so much yet so little, which did not, alas, explain anything.She had accepted the burden, fully knowing what it was, not deceiving herself as to anything that was to follow; but in such a case the first sufferer is scarcely so much to be pitied as the succeeding victims, who have all the misery of seeing the martyr misconstrued and their own faith laughed at. There were times indeed when John Trevanion was not himself sure that he had any faith, and felt himself incapable of striving any longer with the weight of probability against her which she had never attempted to remove or explain.
He went through all the late Mr. Trevanion’s papers without finding any light on the subject of his connection with Everard, or which could explain the fact of his letter to that person. Several letters from his bankers referred indeed to the payment of money at Liverpool, which was where the offender had lived, but this was too faint a light to be calculated upon. As the days went on, order came to a certain degree out of the confusion in John Trevanion’s mind. To be suddenly turned out of the easy existence of a London bachelor about town, with his cosey chambers and luxurious club, and made to assume the head and charge of a family so tragically abandoned, was an extraordinary effort for any man. It was a thing, could he have known it beforehand, which would have made him fly to the uttermost parts of the earth to avoid such a charge; but to have no choice simplifies matters, and the mind habituates itself instinctively to what it is compelled to do. He decided, after much thought, that it was better the family should not return to Highcourt. In the changed circumstances, and deprived of maternal care and protection as they were, no woman about them more experienced than Rosalind, their return could not be otherwise than painful and embarrassing. He decided that they should remain with their aunt, having absolute confidence in her delighted acceptance of their guardianship. Sophy, indeed, was quite incapable of such a charge, but they had Rosalind, and they had the ordinary traditions by which such families are guided. They would, he thought, come to no harm. Mrs.Lennox lived in the neighborhood of Clifton, far enough off to avoid any great or general knowledge of the family tragedy. The majority of the servants were consequently dismissed, and Highcourt, with its windows all closed and its chimneys all but smokeless, fell back into silence, and stood amid its park and fine trees, a habitation of the dead.
It was not until he had done this that John Trevanion carried her stepmother’s letter to Rosalind. He had a very agitating interview with her on the day of his arrival at the Limes, which was the suburban appellation of Sophy’s house. He had to bear the artillery of anxious looks during dinner, and to avoid as he could his sister’s questions, which were not over wise, as to what he had heard, and what he thought, and what people were saying; and it was not till the evening, when the children were disposed of, and Sophy herself had retired, that Rosalind, putting her hand within his arm, drew him to the small library, in which Mrs. Lennox allowed the gentlemen to “make themselves comfortable,” as she said, tolerating tobacco. “I know you have something to say to me, Uncle John—something that you could not say before—them all.”
“Little to say, but something to give you, Rosalind.” She recognized her stepmother’s handwriting in a moment, though it was, as we have said, little remarkable, and with a cry of agitated pleasure threw herself upon it. It was a bulky letter, not like that which he had himself received, but when it was opened was found to contain a long and particular code of directions about the children, and only a small accompanying note. This Rosalind read with an eagerness which made her cheeks glow.
“My Rosalind, I am sometimes glad to think now that you are not mine, and never can have it said to you that your mother is not—as other mothers are. Sophy and little Amy are not so fortunate. You must make it up to them, my darling, by being everything to them—better than I could have been. And when people see what you are they will forget me.“That is not to say, my dearest, that you are to give up your faith in me. For the moment all is darkness—perhaps will always be darkness, all my life. There are cases that may occur in which I shall be able to tell you everything, but what would that matter so long as your father’s prohibition stands? My heart grows sick when I think that in no case— But we will not dwell upon that. My own (though you are not my own), remember me, love me. I am no more unworthy of it than other women are. I have written down all I can think of about the children. You will no doubt have dismissed Russell, but after a time I almost think she should be taken back, for she loves the children. She always hated me, but she loves them. If you can persuade yourself to do it, take her back. Love is too precious to be lost. I am going away from you all very quietly, not permitting myself to reflect. When you think of me, believe that I am doing all I can to live—to live long enough to see my children again. My darling, my own child, I will not say good-bye to you, but only God bless you; and till we meet again,“Your trueMother and Friend.”
“My Rosalind, I am sometimes glad to think now that you are not mine, and never can have it said to you that your mother is not—as other mothers are. Sophy and little Amy are not so fortunate. You must make it up to them, my darling, by being everything to them—better than I could have been. And when people see what you are they will forget me.
“That is not to say, my dearest, that you are to give up your faith in me. For the moment all is darkness—perhaps will always be darkness, all my life. There are cases that may occur in which I shall be able to tell you everything, but what would that matter so long as your father’s prohibition stands? My heart grows sick when I think that in no case— But we will not dwell upon that. My own (though you are not my own), remember me, love me. I am no more unworthy of it than other women are. I have written down all I can think of about the children. You will no doubt have dismissed Russell, but after a time I almost think she should be taken back, for she loves the children. She always hated me, but she loves them. If you can persuade yourself to do it, take her back. Love is too precious to be lost. I am going away from you all very quietly, not permitting myself to reflect. When you think of me, believe that I am doing all I can to live—to live long enough to see my children again. My darling, my own child, I will not say good-bye to you, but only God bless you; and till we meet again,
“Your trueMother and Friend.”
“My true mother,” Rosalind said, with the tears in her eyes, “my dearest friend! Oh, Uncle John, was there ever any such misery before? Was it ever so with any woman? Were children ever made wretched like this, and forced to suffer? And why should it fall to our share?”
John Trevanion shook his head, pondering over the letter, and over the long, perfectly calm, most minute, and detailed instructions which accompanied it. There was nothing left out or forgotten in these instructions. She must have spent the night in putting down every little detail, the smallest as well as the greatest. The writing of the letter to Rosalind showed a little trembling; a tear had fallen on it at one spot; but the longer paper showed nothing of the kind. It was as clear and steady as the many manuscripts from the same hand which he had looked over among his brother’s papers; statements of financial operations, of farming, of improvements. She had putdown all the necessary precautions to be taken for her children in the same way, noting all their peculiarities, for the guidance of the young sister who was hereafter to have the charge of them. This document filled the man with the utmost wonder. Rosalind took it a great deal more easily. To her it was natural that her mother should give these instructions; they were of the highest importance to herself in her novel position, and she understood perfectly that Madam would be aware of the need of them, and that to make some provision for that need would be one of the first things to occur to her. But John Trevanion contemplated the paper from a very different point of view. That a woman so outraged and insulted as (if she were innocent) she must feel herself to be, should pause on the eve of her departure from everything dear to her, from honor and consideration, her home and her place among her peers, to write about Johnny’s tendency to croup and Amy’s readiness to catch cold, was to him more marvellous than almost anything that had gone before. He lingered over it, reading mechanically all those simple directions. A woman at peace, he thought, might have done it, one who knew no trouble more profound than a child’s cough or chilblains. But this woman—in the moment of her anguish—before she disappeared into the darkness of the distant world! “I do not understand it at all,” he said as he put it down.
“Oh,” cried Rosalind, “who could understand it? I think papa must have been mad. Are not bad wills sometimes broken, Uncle John?”
“Not such a will as this. He had a right to leave his money as he pleased.”
“But if we were all to join—if we were to show the mistake, the dreadful mistake, he had made—”
“What mistake? You could prove that your stepmother was no common woman, Rosalind. A thing like this is astounding to me. I don’t know how she could do it. You might prove that she had the power to make fools of you andme. But you could prove nothing more, my dear. Your father knew something more than we know. It might be no mistake; he might have very good reason. Even this letter, though it makes you cry, explains nothing, Rosalind.”
“I want nothing explained,” cried the girl. “Do you think I have any doubt ofher? I could not bear that she should explain—as if I did not know what she is! But, Uncle John, let us all go together to the judge that can do it, and tell him everything, and get him to break the will.”
“The judge who can do that is not to be found in Westminster, Rosalind. It must be one that sees into the heart. I believe in her too—without any reason—but to take it to law would only be to make our domestic misery a little better known.”
Rosalind looked at him with large eyes full of light and excitement. She felt strong enough to defy the world. “Do you mean to say that, whatever happens, though we could prove what we know of her, that she is the best—the best woman in the world—”
“Were she as pure as ice, as chaste as snow, there is nothing to be done. Your father does not say, because of this or that. What he says is absolute. If she continue with the children, or in communication with them, they lose everything.”
“Then let us lose everything,” cried Rosalind in her excitement; “rather be poor and work for our bread, than lose our mother.”
John Trevanion shook his head. “She has already chosen,” he said.
Russellleft Highcourt in such wild commotion of mind and temper, such rage, grief, compunction, and pain, that shewas incapable of any real perception of what had happened, and did not realise, until the damp air blowing in her face as she hurried across the park, sobbing and crying aloud, and scarcely able to keep herself from screaming, brought back her scattered faculties, either what it was that she had been instrumental in doing, or what she had brought upon herself. She did not now understand what it was that had happened to Madam, though she had a kind of vindictive joy, mingled with that sinking of the heart which those not altogether hardened to human suffering feel in regarding a catastrophe brought about by their means, in the thought that she had brought illimitable, irremediable harm to her mistress, whom she had always hated. She had done this whatever might come of it, and even in the thrill of her nerves that owned a human horror of this calamity, there was a fierce exhilaration of success in having triumphed over her enemy. But perhaps she had never wished, never thought, of so complete a triumph. The desire of revenge, which springs so naturally in the undisciplined mind, and is so hot and reckless in its efforts to harm its object, has most generally no fixed intention, but only a vague wish to injure, or, rather, punish; for Russell, to her own consciousness, was inspired by the highest moral sentiment, and meant only to bring retribution on the wicked and to open the eyes of a man who was deceived. She did not understand what had really occurred, but the fact that she had ruined her mistress was at the same time terrible and delightful to her. She did not mean so much as that; but no doubt Madam had been found out more wicked than was supposed, and her heart swelled with pride and a gratified sense of importance even while she trembled. But the consequences to herself were such as she had never foreseen, and for the moment overwhelmed her altogether. She wept hysterically as she hurried to the village, stumbling over the inequalities of the path, wild with sorrow and anger. She had meant to remain in Madam’s service, though she had done all she could to destroy her. She thought nothing less than that life would go on without muchvisible alteration, and that she herself, because there was nobody like her, would necessarily remain with the children to whom her care was indispensable. She had brought them all up from their birth. She had devoted herself to them, and felt her right in them almost greater than their mother’s. “My children,” she said, as the butler said “my plate,” and the housemaid “my grates and carpets.” She spent her whole life with them, whereas it is only a part of hers that the most devoted mother can give. The woman, though she was cruel and hard-hearted in one particular, was in this as tender and sensitive as the most gentle and feminine of women. She loved the children with passion. The idea that they could be torn away from her had never entered her mind. What would they do without her? The two little ones were delicate: they required constant care; without her own attention she felt sure they never could be “reared:” and to be driven from them at a moment’s notice, without time to say good-bye! Sobs came from her breast, convulsive and hysterical, as she rushed along. “Oh, my children!” she cried, under her breath, as if it were she who had been robbed, and who refused to be comforted. She passed some one on the way, who stopped astonished, to look after her, but whom she could scarcely see through the mist of her tears, and at last, with a great effort, subduing the passionate sounds that had been bursting from her, she hurried through the nearest corner of the village to her mother’s house, and there, flinging herself down upon a chair, gave herself up to all the violence of that half-artificial, half-involuntary transport known as hysterics. Her mother was old, and beyond such violent emotions; but though greatly astonished, she was not unacquainted with the manifestation. She got up from the big chair in which she was seated, tottering a little, and hurried to her daughter, getting hold of and smoothing out her clinched fingers. “Dear, dear, now, what be the matter?” she said, soothingly; “Sarah, Sarah, come and look to your poor sister. What’s come to her, what’s come to her, the poor dear? Lordbless us, but she do look bad. Fetch a drop of brandy, quick; that’s the best thing to bring her round.”
When Russell had been made to swallow the brandy, and had exhausted herself and brought her mother and sister into accord with her partial frenzy, she permitted herself to be brought round. She sat up wildly while still in their hands, and stared about her as if she did not know where she was. Then she seized her mother by the arm; “I have been sent away,” she said.
“Sent away. She’s off of her head still, poor dear! Sent away, when they can’t move hand nor foot without you!”
“That’s not so now, mother. It’s all true. I’ve been all the same as turned out of the house, and by her as I nursed and thought of most of all; her as was like my very own; Miss Rosalind! Oh!” and Russell showed inclination to “go off” again, which the assistants resisted by promptly taking possession of her two arms, and opening the hands which she would have clinched if she could.
“There now, deary; there now! don’t you excite yourself. You’re among them that wishes you well here.”
“Oh, I know that, mother. But Miss Rosalind, she’s as good as taken me by the shoulders and put me out of the house, and took my children from me as I’ve brought up; and what am I to do without my babies? Oh, oh! I wish I had never been born.”
“I hope you’ve got your wages and board wages, and something over to make up? You ought to have that,” said the sister, who was a woman of good sense. Russell, indeed, had sufficient command of herself to nod in assent.
“And your character safe?” said the old woman. “I will say that for you, deary, that you have always been respectable. And whatever it is that’s happened, so long as it’s nothing again your character, you’ll get another place fast enough. I don’t hold with staying too long in one family. You’d just like to stick there forever.”
“Oh, don’t speak to me about new places. My children as I’ve brought up! It has nothing to do with me; it’s all because I told master of Madam’s goings-on. And he’s been and put her away in his will—and right too. And Miss Rosalind, that always was unnatural, that took to that woman more than to her aunt, or me, or any one, she jumps up to defend Madam, and ‘go out of the house, woman!’ and stamping with her foot, and going on like a fury. And my little Master Johnny, that would never go to nobody but me! Oh, mother, I’ll die of it, I’ll die of it—my children that I’ve brought up!”
“I’ve told you all,” said the old woman, “never you meddle with the quality. It can’t come to no good.” She had given up her ministrations, seeing that her patient had come round, and retired calmly to her chair. “Madam’s goings-on was no concern of yours. You ought to have known that. When a poor person puts herself in the way of a rich person, it’s always her as goes to the wall.”
Of these maxims the mother delivered herself deliberately as she sat twirling her thumbs. The sister, who was the mistress of the cottage, showed a little more sympathy.
“As long as you’ve got your board wages,” she said, “and a somethin’ to make up. Mother’s right enough, but I’ll allow as it’s hard to do. They’re all turned topsy-turvy at the Red Lion about Madam’s young man—him as all this business was about.”
“What’s about him?” cried Russell, for the first time with real energy raising her head.
“It turns out as he’s robbed his masters in Liverpool,” said Sarah, with the perfect coolness of a rustic spectator; “just what was to be expected; and the detectives is after him. He was here yesterday, I’ll take my oath, but now he’s gone, and there’s none can find him. There’s a reward of—”
“I’ll find him,” cried Russell, springing to her feet. “I’ll track him. I’m good for nothing now in a common way. I cannot rest, I cannot settle to needlework or that sort.” Shewas fastening her cloak as she spoke, and tying on her bonnet. “I’ve heaps of mending to do, for I never had a moment’s time to think of myself, but only of them that have showed no more gratitude— My heart’s broke, that’s what it is— I can’t settle down; but here’s one thing I’m just in a humor to do— I’ll track him out.”
“Lord, Lizzie! what are you thinking of it? You don’t know no more than Adam what way they’re gone, or aught about him.”
“And if you’ll take my advice, deary,” said the old woman, “you’ll neither make nor meddle with the quality. Right or wrong, it’s always the poor folk as go to the wall.”
“I’ll track him, that’s what I’ll do. I’m just in the humor for that,” cried Russell, savagely. “Don’t stop me. What do I care for a bit of money to prove as I’m right. I’ll go and I’ll find them. Providence will put me on the right way. Providence’ll help me to find all that villainy out.”
“But, Lizzie! stop and have a bit to eat at least. Don’t go off like that, without even a cup of tea—”
“Oh, don’t speak to me about cups of tea!” Russell rushed at her mother and dabbed a hurried kiss upon her old cheek. She waved her hand to her sister, who stood open-mouthed, wondering at her, and finally rushed out in an excitement and energy which contrasted strangely with her previous prostration. The two rustic spectators stood gazing after her with consternation. “She was always one as had no patience,” said the mother at last. “And without a bit of dinner or a glass of beer, or anything,” said Sarah. After that they returned to their occupations and closed the cottage door.
Russell rushed forth to the railway station, which was at least a mile from the village. She was transported out of herself with excitement, misery, a sense of wrong, a sense of remorse—all the conflicting passions which the crisis had brought. To prove to herself that her suspicions were justified about Madam was in reality as strong a motive in her mind as the fierce desireof revenge upon her mistress, which drove her nearly frantic; and she had that wild confidence in chance, and indifference to reason, which are at once the strength and weakness of the uneducated. She would get on the track somehow; she would find them somehow; Madam’s young man, and Madam herself. She would give him up to justice, and shame the woman for whose sake she had been driven forth. And, as it happened, Russell, taking her ticket for London, found herself in the same carriage with the man who had come in search of the stranger at the Red Lion, and acquired an amount of information and communicated a degree of zeal which stimulated the search on both sides. When they parted in town she was provided with an address to which to telegraph instantly on finding any trace of the fugitives, and flung herself upon the great unknown world of London with a faith and a virulence which were equally violent. She did not know where to go nor what to do; she had very little acquaintance with London. The Trevanions had a town house in a street near Berkeley Square, and all that she knew was the immediate neighborhood of that dignified centre—of all places in the world least likely to shelter the fugitives. She went there, however, in her helplessness, and carried consternation to the bosom of the charwoman in charge, who took in the strange intelligence vaguely, and gaped and hoped as it wasn’t true. “So many things is said, and few of ’em ever comes true,” this philosophical observer said. “But I’ve come out of the middle of it, and I know it’s true, every word,” she almost shrieked in her excitement. The charwoman was a little hard of hearing. “We’ll hope as it’ll all turn out lies—they mostly does,” she said. This was but one of many rebuffs the woman met with. She had spent more than a week wandering about London, growing haggard and thin; her respectable clothes growing shabby, her eyes wild—the want of proper sleep and proper food making a hollow-eyed spectre of the once smooth and dignified upper servant—when she was unexpectedly rewardedfor all her pangs and exertions by meeting Jane one morning, sharply and suddenly, turning round a corner. The two women paused by a mutual impulse, and then one cried, “What are you doing here?” and the other, grasping her firmly by the arm, “I’ve caught you at last.”
“Caught me! Were you looking for me? What do you want? Has anything happened to the children?” Jane cried, beginning to tremble.
“The children! how dare you take their names in your mouth, you as is helping to ruin and shame them? I’ll not let you go now I’ve got you; oh, don’t think it! I’ll stick to you till I get a policeman.”
“A policeman to me!” cried poor Jane, who, not knowing what mysterious powers the law might have, trembled more and more. “I’ve done nothing,” she said.
“But them as you are with has done a deal,” cried Russell. “Where is that young man? Oh, I know— I know what he’s been and done. I have took an oath on my Bible that I’ll track him out. If I’m to be driven from my place and my dear children for Madam’s sake, she shall just pay for it, I can tell you. You thought I’d put up with it and do nothing, but a worm will turn. I’ve got it in my power to publish her shame, and I’ll do it. I know a deal more than I knew when I told master of her goings-on. But now I’ve got you I’ll stick to you, and them as you’re with, and I’ll have my revenge,” Russell cried, her wild eyes flaming, her haggard cheeks flushing; “I’ll have my revenge. Ah!”
She paused here with a cry of consternation, alarm, dismay, for there stepped out of a shop hard by, Madam herself, and laid a hand suddenly upon her arm.
“Russell,” she said, “I am sorry they have sent you away. I know you love the children.” At this a convulsive movement passed across her face, which sent through the trembling, awe-stricken woman a sympathetic shudder. They were one in this deprivation, though they were enemies. “You have alwayshated me, I do not know why: but you love the children. I would not have removed you from them. I have written to Miss Rosalind to bid her have you back when—when she is calmer. And you that have done me so much harm, what do you want with me?” said Madam, looking with the pathetic smile which threw such a strange light upon her utterly pale face, upon this ignorant pursuer.
“I’ve come— I’ve come”—she gasped, and then stood trembling, unable to articulate, holding herself up by the grasp she had taken with such different intentions of Jane’s arm, and gazing with her hollow eyes with a sort of fascination upon the lady whom at last she had hunted down.
“I think she is fainting,” Madam said. “Whatever she wants, she has outdone her strength.” There was a compassion in the tone, which, in Russell’s weakened state, went through and through her. Her mistress took her gently by the other arm, and led her into the shop she had just left. Here they brought her wine and something to eat, of which she had the greatest need. “My poor woman,” said Madam, “your search for me was vain, for Mr. John Trevanion knows where to find me at any moment. You have done me all the harm one woman could do another; what could you desire more? But I forgive you for my children’s sake. Go back, and Rosalind will take you again, because you love them; and take care of my darlings, Russell,” she said, with that ineffable smile of anguish; “say no ill to them of their mother.”
“Oh, Madam, kill me!” Russell cried.
That was the last that was seen in England of Madam Trevanion. The woman, overcome with passion, remorse, and long fasting and misery, fainted outright at her mistress’s feet. And when she came to herself the lady and her maid were both gone, and were seen by her no more.
Thereis nothing more strange in all the experiences of humanity than the manner in which a great convulsion either in nature or in human history ceases after a while to affect the world. Grass grows and flowers wave over the soil which an earthquake has rent asunder; and the lives of men are similarly torn in twain without leaving a much more permanent result. The people whom we see one year crushed by some great blow, when the next has come have begun to pursue their usual course again. This means no infidelity of nature, no forgetting; but only the inevitable progress by which the world keeps going. There is no trouble, however terrible, that does not yield to the touch of time.
Some two years after these events Rosalind Trevanion felt herself, almost against her will, emerging out of the great shadow which had overwhelmed her life. She had been for a time swallowed up in the needs of the family, all her powers demanded for the rearrangement of life on its new basis, and everything less urgent banished from her. But by degrees the most unnatural arrangements fall into the calm of habit, the most unlooked-for duties become things of every day. Long before the period at which this history resumes, it had ceased to be wonderful to any one that Rosalind should take her place as head of the desolated house. She assumed unconsciously that position of sister-mother which is one of the most touching and beautiful that exist, with the ease which necessity brings—not asking how she could do it, but doing it; as did the bystanders who criticise every course of action and dictate what can and what cannot be done, but who all acceptedher in her new duties with a composure which soon made everybody forget how strange, how unlikely, to the girl those duties were. The disappearance of the mother, the breaking-up of the house, was no doubt a nine-days’ wonder, and gave occasion in the immediate district for endless discussions; but the wonder died out as every wonder dies out. Outside of the county it was but vaguely known, and to those who professed to tell the details with authority there was but a dull response; natural sentiment at a distance being all against the possibility that anything so extraordinary and odious could be true. “You may depend upon it, a woman who was going to behave so at the end must have shown signs of it from the beginning,” people said, and the propagation of the rumor was thus seriously discouraged. Mrs. Lennox, though she was not wise, had enough of good sense and good feeling not to tell even to her most intimate friends the circumstances of her sister-in-law’s disappearance; and this not so much for Madam’s sake as for that of her brother, whose extraordinary will appeared to her simple understanding so great a shame and scandal that she kept it secret for Reginald’s sake. Indeed, all she did in the matter was for Reginald’s sake. She did not entertain the confidence in Madam with which Rosalind and John enshrined the fugitive. To Rosalind, Mrs. Lennox said little on the subject, with a respect for the girl’s innocence which persons of superior age and experience are not always restrained by; but that John, a man who knew the world, should go on as he did, was a thing which exasperated his sister. How he could persuade himself of Mrs. Trevanion’s innocence was a thing she could not explain. Why, what could it be? she asked herself, angrily. Everybody knows that the wisest of men or women are capable of going wrong for one cause; but what other could account for the flight of a woman, of a mother from her children, the entire disappearance of her out of all the scenes of her former life? When her brother told her that there was no help for it, that in the interests of her children Madam was compelledto go away, Aunt Sophy said “Stuff!” What was a woman good for if she could not find some means of eluding such a monstrous stipulation? “Do you think I would have minded him? I should have disguised myself, hidden about, done anything rather than desert my family,” she cried; and when it was suggested to her that Madam was too honorable, too proud, too high-minded to deceive, Sophy said nothing but “Stuff!” again. “Do you think anything in the world would make me abandon my children—if I had any?” she cried. But though she was angry with John and impatient of Rosalind, she kept the secret. And after a time all audible comments on the subject died away. “There is something mysterious about the matter,” people said; “I believe Mrs. Trevanion is still living.” And then it began to be believed that she was ill and obliged to travel for her health, which was the best suggestion that could have been made.
And Rosalind gradually, but nevertheless fully, came out of the shadow of that blighting cloud. What is there in human misery which can permanently crush a heart under twenty? Nothing, at least save the last and most intolerable of personal losses, and even then only in the case of a passionate, undisciplined soul or a feeble body. Youth will overcome everything if it has justice and fresh air and occupation. And Rosalind made her way out of all the ways of gloom and misery to the sky and sunshine. Her memory had, indeed, an indelible scar upon it at that place. She could not turn back and think of the extraordinary mystery and anguish of that terrible moment without a convulsion of the heart, and sense that all the foundations of the earth had been shaken. But happily, at her age, there is not much need of turning back upon the past. She shivered when the momentary recollection crossed her mind, but could always throw it off and come back to the present, to the future, which are always so much more congenial.
This great catastrophe, which made a sort of chasm betweenher and her former life, had given a certain maturity to Rosalind. At twenty she had already much of the dignity, the self-possession, the seriousness of a more advanced age. She had something of the air of a young married woman, a young mother, developed by the early experiences of life. The mere freshness of girlhood, even when it is most exquisite, has a less perfect charm than this; and the fact that Rosalind was still a girl, notwithstanding the sweet and noble gravity of her responsible position, added to her an exceptional charm. She was supposed by most people to be five years at least older than she was: and she was the mother of her brothers and sisters, at once more and less than a mother; perhaps less anxious, perhaps more indulgent, not old enough to perceive with the same clearness or from the same point of view, seeing from the level of the children more than perhaps a mother can. To see her with her little brother in her lap was the most lovely of pictures. Something more exquisite even than maternity was in this virgin-motherhood. She was a better type of the second mother than any wife. This made a sort of halo around the young creature who had so many responsibilities. But yet in her heart Rosalind was only a girl; the other half of her had not progressed beyond where it was before that great crisis. There was within her a sort of decisive consciousness of the apparent maturity which she had thus acquired, and she only such a child—a girl at heart.
In this profound girlish soul of hers, which was her very self, while the other was more or less the product of circumstances, it still occurred to Rosalind now and then to wonder how it was that she had never had a lover. Even this was meant in a manner of her own. Miss Trevanion of Highcourt had not been without suitors; men who had admired her beauty or her position. But these were not at all what she meant by a lover. She meant what an imaginative girl means when such a thought crosses her mind. She meant Romeo, or perhaps Hamlet—had love been restored to the possibilities of that noblestof all disenchanted souls—or even such a symbol as Sir Kenneth. She wondered whether it would ever be hers to find wandering about the world the other part of her, him who would understand every thought and feeling, him to whom it would be needless to speak or to explain, who would know; him for whom mighty love would cleave in twain the burden of a single pain and part it, giving half to him. The world, she thought, could not hold together as it did under the heavens, had it ceased to be possible that men and women should meet each other so. But such a meeting had never occurred yet in Rosalind’s experience, and seeing how common it was, how invariable an occurrence in the experience of all maidens of poetry and fiction, the failure occasioned her always a little surprise. Had she never seen any one, met about the world any form, in which she could embody such a possibility? She did not put this question to herself plainly, but there was in her imagination a sort of involuntary answer to it, or rather the ghost of an answer, which would sometimes make itself known, from without, she thought, more than from within—as if a face had suddenly looked at her, or a whisper been breathed in her ear. She did not give any name to this vision or endeavor to identify it.
But imagination is obstinate and not to be quenched, and in inadvertent moments she half acknowledged to herself that it had a being and a name. Who or what he was, indeed, she could not tell; but sometimes in her imagination the remembered tone of a voice would thrill her ears, or a pair of eyes would look into hers. This recollection or imagination would flash upon her at the most inappropriate moments; sometimes when she was busy with her semi-maternal cares, or full of household occupation which left her thoughts free—moments when she was without defence. Indeed, temptation would come upon her in this respect from the most innocent quarter, from her little brother, who looked up at her with eyes that were like the eyes of her dream. Was that why he had becomeher darling, her favorite, among the children? Oh, no; it was because he was the youngest, the baby, the one to whom a mother was most of all wanting. Aunt Sophy, indeed, who was so fond of finding out likenesses, had said— And there was a certain truth in it. Johnny’s eyes were very large and dark, shining out of the paleness of his little face; he was a delicate child; or perhaps only a pale-faced child looking delicate, for there never was anything the matter with him. His eyes were very large for a child, appearing so, perhaps, because he was himself so little; a child of fine organization, with the most delicate, pure complexion, and blue veins showing distinctly through the delicate tissue of his skin. Rosalind felt a sort of dreamy bliss come over her when Johnny fixed his great, soft eyes upon her, looking up with a child’s devout attention. She loved the child dearly, was not that enough? And then there was the suggestion. Likenesses are very curious; they are so arbitrary, no one can tell how they come; there was a likeness, she admitted to herself; and then wondered—half wishing it, half angry with herself for the idea—whether perhaps it was the likeness to her little brother which had impressed the face of a stranger so deeply upon her dreams.
Who was he? Where did he come from? Where, all this long time, for these many months, had he gone? If it was because of her he had come to the village, how strange that he should never have appeared again! It was impossible it could have been for her; yet, if not for her, for whom could he have come? She asked herself these questions so often that her vision gradually lost identity and became a tradition, an abstraction, the true lover after whom she had been wondering. She endowed him with all the qualities which girls most dearly prize. She talked to him upon every subject under heaven. In all possible emergencies that arose to her fancy he came and stood by her and helped her. No real man is ever so noble, so tender, so generous as such an ideal man can be.And Rosalind forgot altogether that she had asked herself whether it was certain that he was a gentleman, the original of this shadowy figure which had got into her imagination she scarcely could tell how.
Mrs. Lennox’shouse was not a great country-house like Highcourt. It was within a mile of Clifton, a pretty house, set in pretty grounds, with a few fields about it, and space enough to permit of a sufficient but modest establishment; horses and dogs, and pets in any number to satisfy the children. Reginald, indeed, when he came home for the holidays, somewhat scoffed at the limited household, and declared that there was scarcely room to breathe. For the young master of Highcourt everything was small and shabby, but as his holidays were broken by visits to the houses of his schoolfellows, where young Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt had many things in his favor, and as he thus managed to get as much shooting and hunting and other delights as a schoolboy can indulge in, he was, on the whole, gracious enough to Aunt Sophy and Rosalind, and their limited ways. The extraordinary changes that followed his father’s death had produced a curious effect upon the boy; there had been, indeed, a moment of impulse in which he had declared his intention of standing by his mother, but a fuller understanding of all that was involved had summarily checked this. The youthful imagination, when roused by the thought of wealth and importance, is as insatiable in these points as it is when inflamed by the thirst for pleasure, and it is, perhaps, more difficult to give up or consent to modify greatness which you have never had, but have hoped for, than to give up an actual possession. Reginald had felt this importance as his father’s heir so much, that the idea of depriving himself of it for the sake of his mother brought a sudden damp and chill all over his energies. He was silent when he heard what a sacrificewas necessary, even though it was a sacrifice in imagination only, the reality being unknown to him. And from that moment the thing remarkable in him was that he had never mentioned his mother’s name.
With the other children this effect had at the end of the year been almost equally attained, but by degrees; they had ceased to refer to her as they had ceased to refer to their father. Both parents seemed to have died together to these little ones. The one, like the other, faded as the dead do out of their personal sphere, and ceased to have any place in their life. They said Rosalind now, when they used to say mamma. But with Reginald the effect was different—young though he was, in his schoolboy sphere he had a certain knowledge of the world. He knew that it was something intolerable when a fellow’s family was in everybody’s mouth, and his mother was discussed and talked of, and there was a sort of half-fury against her in his mind for subjecting him to this. The pangs which a proud boy feels in such circumstances are difficult to fathom, for their force is aggravated by the fact that he never betrays them. The result was that he never mentioned her, never asked a question, put on a mien of steel when anything was said which so much as suggested her existence, and from the moment of his departure from Highcourt ignored altogether the name and possibility of a mother. He was angry with the very name.
Sophy was the only one who caused a little embarrassment now and then by her recollections of the past life of Highcourt and the household there. But Sophy was not favorable to her mother, which is a strange thing to say, and had no lingering tenderness to smother; she even went so far now and then as to launch a jibe at Rosalind on the subject of mamma. As for the little ones, they already remembered her no more. The Elms, which was the suburban title of Mrs. Lennox’s small domain, became the natural centre of their little lives, and they forgot the greater and more spacious house in which they wereborn. And now that the second year was nearly accomplished since the catastrophe happened, natural gayety and consolation had come back. Rosalind went out to such festivities as offered. She spent a few weeks in London, and saw a little of society. The cloud had rolled away from her young horizon, leaving only a dimness and mist of softened tears. And the Elms was, in its way, a little centre of society. Aunt Sophy was very hospitable. She liked the pleasant commotion of life around her, and she was pleased to feel the stir of existence which the presence of a girl brings to such a house. Rosalind was not a beauty so remarkable as to draw admirers and suitors from every quarter of the compass. These are rare in life, though we are grateful to meet so many of them in novels; but she was extremely pleasant to look upon, fair and sweet as so many English girls are, with a face full of feeling, and enough of understanding and poetry to give it something of an ideal charm. And though it was, as we have said, the wonder of her life that she had never, like young ladies in novels, had a lover, yet she was not without admiration nor without suitors, quite enough to maintain her self-respect and position in the world.
One of these was the young Hamerton who was a visitor at Highcourt at the opening of this history. He was the son of another county family of the Highcourt neighborhood; not the eldest son, indeed, but still not altogether to be ranked among the detrimentals, since he was to have his mother’s money, a very respectable fortune. And he was by way of being a barrister, although not so unthoughtful of the claims of others as to compete for briefs with men who had more occasion for them. He had come to Clifton for the hunting, not, perhaps, without a consciousness of Rosalind’s vicinity. He had not shown at all during the troubles at Highcourt or for some time after, being too much disturbed and alarmed by his own discovery to approach the sorrowful family. But by degrees this feeling wore off, and a girl who was under Mrs. Lennox’s wing,and who, after all, was not “really the daughter” of the erring woman, would have been most unjustly treated had she been allowed to suffer in consequence of the mystery attached to Madam Trevanion and her disappearance from the world. Mrs. Lennox had known Roland Hamerton’s father as well as Rosalind knew himself. The families had grown up together, calling each other by their Christian names, on that preliminary brother-and-sister footing which is so apt with opportunity to grow into something closer. And Roland had always thought Rosalind the prettiest girl about. When he got over the shock of the Highcourt mystery his heart had come back to her with a bound. And if he came to Clifton for the hunting instead of to any other centre, it was with a pleasant recollection that the Elms was within walking distance, and that there he was always likely to find agreeable occupation for “off” days. On such occasions, and even on days which were not “off” days, he would come, sometimes to luncheon, sometimes in the afternoon, with the very frequent consequence of sending off a message to Clifton for “his things,” and staying all night. He was adopted, in short, as a sort of son or nephew of the house.
It is undeniable that a visitor of this sort (or even more than one) is an addition to the cheerfulness of a house in the country. It may, perhaps, be dangerous to his own peace of mind, or even, if he is frivolous, to the comfort of a daughter of the same, but so long as he is on these easy terms, with no definite understanding one way or the other, he is a pleasant addition. The least amiable of men is obliging and pleasant in such circumstances. He is on his promotion. Hisraison d’êtreis his power of making himself agreeable. When he comes to have a definite position as an accepted lover, everything is changed again, and he may be as much in the way as he once was handy and desirable; but in his first stage he is always an addition, especially when the household is chiefly composed of women. Hamerton fell into this pleasant place with even more ease than usual. He was already so familiarwith them all, that everything was natural in the arrangement. And Mrs. Lennox, there was no doubt, wished the young man well. It would not be a brilliant match, but it would be “quite satisfactory.” Had young Lord Elmore come a-wooing instead of Roland, that would have been, no doubt, more exciting. But Lord Elmore paid his homage in another direction, and his antecedents were not quite so good as Hamerton’s, who was one of those young men who have never given their parents an anxiety—a qualification which, it is needless to say, was dear above every other to Aunt Sophy’s heart.
He was seated with them in the drawing-room at the Elms on an afternoon of November. It had been a day pleasant enough for the time of year, but not for hunting men—a clear frosty day, with ice in all the ditches, and the ground hard and resounding; a day when it is delightful to walk, though not to ride. Rosalind had met him strolling towards the house when she was out for her afternoon walk. Perhaps he was not so sorry for himself as he professed to the ladies. “I shall bore you to death,” he said; “I shall always be coming, for I see now we are in for a ten days’ frost, which is the most dolorous prospect—at least, it would be if I had not the Elms to fall back upon.” He made this prognostication of evil with a beaming face.
“You seem on the whole to take it cheerfully,” Mrs. Lennox said.
“Yes, with the Elms to fall back upon; I should not take it cheerfully otherwise.”
“But you were here on Saturday, Roland, when the meet was at Barley Wood, and everybody was out,” cried little Sophy. “I don’t think you are half a hunting man. I shouldn’t miss a day if it were me; nor Reginald wouldn’t,” she added, with much indifference to grammar.
“It is all the fault of the Elms,” the young man said, with a laugh.
“I don’t know what you find at the Elms. Reginald sayswe are so dull here. I think so too—nothing but women; and you that have got two or three clubs and can go where you like.”
“You shall go to the clubs, Sophy, instead of me.”
“That is what I should like,” said Miss Sophy. “Everybody says men are cleverer than women, and I am very fond of good talk. I like to hear you talk of horses and things; and of betting a pot on Bucephalus—”
“Sophy! where did you hear such language? You must be sent back to the nursery,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “if you go on like that.”
“Well,” said Sophy, “Reginald had a lot on Bucephalus: he told me so. He says it’s dreadful fun. You are kept in such a state till the last moment, not knowing which is to win. Sometimes the favorite is simply nowhere, and if you happen to have drawn a dark horse—”
“Sophy! I can’t allow such language.”
“And the favorite has been cooked, don’t you know, or come to grief in the stable,” cried Sophy, breathless, determined to have it out, “then you win a pot of money! It was Reginald told me all that. I don’t know myself, more’s the pity; and because I am a girl I don’t suppose I shall ever know,” the little reprobate said, regretfully.
“Dear me, I never thought those things were permitted at Eton,” said Mrs. Lennox. “I always thought boys were safe there. Afterwards, one knows, not a moment can be calculated upon. That is what is so nice about you, Roland; you never went into anything of that kind. I wish so much, if you are here at Christmas, you would give Reginald a little advice.”
“I don’t much believe in advice, Mrs. Lennox. Besides, I’m not so immaculate as you think me; I’ve had in my day a pot on something or other, as Sophy says—”
“Sophy must not say those sort of things,” said her aunt. “Rosalind, give us some tea. It is quite cold enough to make the fire most agreeable and the tea a great comfort. And ifyou have betted you have seen the folly of it, and you could advise him all the better. That is always the worst with boys when they have women to deal with. They think we know nothing. Whether it is because we have not education, or because we have not votes, or what, I can’t tell. But Reginald for one does not pay the least attention. He thinks he knows ever so much better than I do. And John is abroad; he doesn’t care very much for John either. He calls him an old fogy; he says the present generation knows better than the last. Did you ever hear such impertinence? And he is only seventeen. I like two lumps of sugar, Rosalind. But I thought at Eton they ought to be safe.”
“I suppose you are going home for Christmas, Roland? Shall you all be at home? Alice and her baby, and every one of you?” Rosalind breathed softly a little sigh. “I don’t like Christmas,” she said; “it is all very well so long as you are quite young, but when you begin to get scattered and broken up—”
“My dear, I am far from being quite young, and I hope I have been scattered as much as anybody, and had every sort of thing to put up with, but I never grow too old or too dull for Christmas.”
“Ah, Aunt Sophy, you! But then you are not like anybody else; you take things so sweetly, even Rex and his impertinence.”
“Christmas is pleasant enough,” said young Hamerton. “We are not so much scattered but that we can all get back, and I like it well enough. But,” he added, “if one was wanted elsewhere, or could be of use, I am not such a fanatic for home but that I could cut it once in a way, if there was anything, don’t you know, Mrs. Lennox, that one would call a duty; like licking a young cub into shape, or helping a—people you are fond of.” He blushed and laughed, in the genial, confusing glow of the fire, and cast a glance at Rosalind to see whether she noted his offer, and understood the motive of it. “People one is fond of;” did she think that meant Aunt Sophy?There was a pleasant mingling of obscurity and light even when the cheerful flame leaped up and illuminated the room: something in its leaping and uncertainty made a delightful shelter. You might almost stare at the people you were fond of without being betrayed as the cold daylight betrays you; and as for the heat which he felt suffuse his countenance, that was altogether unmarked in the genial glow of the cheerful fire.
Inan easy house, where punctuality is not rampant, the hour before dinner is pleasant to young people. The lady of the house is gone to dress. If she is beginning to feel the weight of years, she perhaps likes a nap before dinner, and in any case she will change her dress in a leisurely manner and likes to have plenty of time; and the children have been carried off to the nursery that their toilet may be attended to, and no hurried call afterwards interfere with the tying of their sashes. The young lady of the house is not moved by either of these motives. Five minutes is enough for her, she thinks and says, and the room is so cosey and the half light so pleasant, and it is the hour for confidences. If she has another girl with her, they will drift into beginnings of the most intimate narrative, which must be finished in their own rooms after everybody has gone to bed; and if it is not a girl, but the other kind of companion, those confidences are perhaps even more exciting. Rosalind knew what Roland Hamerton wanted, vaguely: she was, on the surface, not displeased with his devotions. She had no intention of coming to so very decided a step as marriage, nor did she for a moment contemplate him as the lover whose absence surprised her. But he was nice enough. She liked well enough to talk to him. They were like brother and sister, she would have said. “Roland—why, I have known him all my life,” she would have exclaimed indignantly to any onewho had blamed her for “encouraging” this poor young man. Indeed, Rosalind was so little perfect that she had already on several occasions defended herself in this way, and had not the slightest intention of accepting Roland, and yet allowed him to persuade her to linger and talk after Aunt Sophy had gone up-stairs. This was quite unjustifiable, and a more high-minded young woman would not have done it. But poor Rosalind, though her life had been crossed by a strain of tragedy and though her feelings were very deep and her experiences much out of the common, and her mind capable and ready to respond to very high claims, was yet not the ideal of a high-minded girl. It is to be hoped that she was unacquainted with flirtation and above it, but yet she did not dislike—so long as she could skilfully keep him from anything definite in the way of a proposal, anything that should be compromising and uncomfortable to sit and listen to—the vague adoration which was implied in Hamerton’s talk, and to feel that the poor young fellow was laying himself out to please her. It did please her, and it amused her—which was more. It was sport to her, though it might be death to him. She did not believe that there was anything sufficiently serious in young Hamerton’s feelings or in his character to involve anything like death, and she judged with some justice that he preferred the happiness of the moment, even if it inspired him with false hopes, to the collapse of all those hopes which a more conscientious treatment would have brought about. Accordingly, Rosalind lingered in the pleasant twilight. She sent her aunt’s butler, Saunders, away when he appeared to light the lamps.
“Not yet, Saunders,” she said, “we like the firelight,” in a manner which made Roland’s heart jump. It seemed to that deceived young man that nothing but a flattering response of sentiment in her mind would have made Rosalind, like himself, enjoy the firelight. “That was very sweet of you,” he said.
“What was sweet of me?” The undeserved praise awakened a compunction in her. “There is nothing good in saying whatis true. I do like talking by this light. Summer evenings are different, they are always a little sad; but the fire is cheerful, and it makes people confidential.”
“If I could think you wanted me to be confidential, Rosalind!”
“Oh, I do; everybody! I like to talk about not only the outside, but what people are really thinking of. One hears so much of the outside: all the runs you have had, and how Captain Thornton jumps, and Miss Plympton keeps the lead.”
“If you imagine that I admire Miss Plympton—”
“I never thought anything of the kind. Why shouldn’t you admire her? Though she is a little too fond of hunting, she is a nice girl, and I like her. And she is very pretty. You might do a great deal worse, Roland,” said Rosalind, with maternal gravity, “than admire Ethel Plympton. She is quite a nice girl, not only when she is on horseback. But she would not have anything to say to you.”
“That is just as well,” said the young man, “for hers is not the sort of shrine I should ever worship at. The kind of girl I like doesn’t hunt, though she goes like a bird when it strikes her fancy. She is the queen at home, she makes a room like this into heaven. She makes a man feel that there’s nothing in life half so sweet as to be by her, whatever she is doing. She would make hard work and poverty and all that sort of thing delightful. She is—”
“A dreadful piece of perfection!” said Rosalind, with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Don’t you know nobody likes to have that sort of person held up to them? One always suspects girls that are too good. But I hope you sometimes think of other things than girls,” she added, with an air of delightful gravity and disapproval. “I have wanted all this long time to know what you were going to do; and to find instead only that hyperbolical fiend, you know, that talks of nothing but ladies, is disappointing. What would you think of me,” Rosalind continued, turning upon him with still more imposing dignity, “if I talked to you of nothing but gentlemen?”
“Rosalind!—that’s blasphemy to think of; besides that I should feel like getting behind a hedge and shooting all of them,” the young man cried.
“Yes, it is a sort of blasphemy; you would all think a girl a dreadful creature if she did so. But you think you are different, and that it doesn’t matter; that is what everybody says; one law for men and one for women. But I, for one, will never give in to that. I want to know what you are going to do.”
“And suppose,” he cried, “that I were to return the question, since you say there must not be one law for men and one for women. Rosalind, what are you going to do?”
“I?” she said, and looked at him with surprise. “Alas! you know I have my work cut out for me, Roland. I have to bring up the children; they are very young, and it will be a great many years before they can do without me; there is no question about me. Perhaps it is a good thing to have your path quite clear before you, so that you can’t make any mistake about it,” she added, with a little sigh.
“But, Rosalind, that is completely out of the question, don’t you know. Sacrifice yourself and all your life to those children—why, it would be barbarous; nobody would permit it.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosalind, “who has any right to interfere. You think Uncle John, perhaps? Uncle John would never think of anything so foolish. It is much less his business than it is mine; and you forget that I am old enough to judge for myself.”
“Rosalind, you can’t really intend anything so dreadful! Oh, at present you are so young, you are all living in the same house, it does not make so much difference. But to sacrifice yourself, to give up your own life, to relinquish everything for a set of half—”
“You had better not make me angry,” she said. He had sprung to his feet and was pacing about in great excitement, his figure relieved against the blaze of the fire, while she sat in the shadow at one side, protected from the glow. “What am Igiving up? In the first place, I know nothing that I am giving up; and I confess that it amuses me, Roland, to see you so excited about my life. I should like to hear what you are going to do with your own.”
“Can’t you understand?” he cried, hastily and in confusion, “that the one might—that the one might—involve perhaps—” And here the young man stopped and looked helplessly at her, not daring to risk what he had for the uncertainty of something better. But it was very hard, when he had gone so far, to refrain.
“Might involve perhaps— No, I can’t understand,” Rosalind said, almost with unconcern. “What I do understand is that you can’t hunt forever if you are going to be any good in life. And you don’t even hunt as a man ought that means to make hunting his object. Do something, Roland, as if you meant it!—that is what I am always telling you.”
“And don’t I always tell you the same thing, that I am no hero. I can’t hold on to an object, as you say. What do you mean by an object? I want a happy life. I should like very well to be kind to people, and do my duty and all that, but as for an object, Rosalind! If you expect me to become a reformer or a philanthropist or anything of that sort, or make a great man of myself—”
Rosalind shook her head softly in her shadowed corner. “I don’t expect that,” she said, with a tone of regret. “I might have done so, perhaps, at one time. At first one thinks every boy can do great things, but that is only for a little while, when one is without experience.”
“You see you don’t think very much of my powers, for all you say,” he cried, hastily, with the tone of offence which the humblest can scarcely help assuming when taken at his own low estimate. Roland knew very well that he had no greatness in him, but to have the fact acknowledged with this regretful certainty was somewhat hard.
“That is quite a different matter,” said Rosalind. “Only afew men (I see now) can be great. I know nobody of that kind,” she added, with once more that tone of regret, shaking her head. “But you can always do something, not hang on amusing yourself, for that is all you ever do, so far as I can see.”
“What does your Uncle John do?” he cried; “you have a great respect for him, and so have I; he is just the best man going. But what does he do? He loafs about; he goes out a great deal when he is in town; he goes to Scotland for the grouse, he goes to Homburg for his health, he comes down and sees you, and then back to London again. Oh, I think that’s all right, but if I am to take him for my example—and I don’t know where I could find a better—”
“There is no likeness between your case and his. Uncle John is old, he has nothing particular given him to do; he is—well, he is Uncle John. But you, Roland, you are just my age.”
“I’m good five years older, if not more.”
“What does that matter? You are my own age, or, according to all rules of comparison between boys and girls, a little younger than me. You have got to settle upon something. I am not like many people,” said Rosalind, loftily; “I don’t say do this or do that; I only say, for Heaven’s sake do something, Roland; don’t be idle all your life.”
“I should not mind so much if you did say do this or do that. Tell me something to do, Rosalind, and I’ll do it for your sake.”