“Would you like me to cry, Jane? I might do that, too, but what the better should we be? If I were to cry all to-day and to-morrow, the moment would come when I should have to stop and smile again. And then,” she said, turning hastily upon her faithful follower, “I can’t cry—I can’t cry!” with a spasm of anguish going over her face. “Besides, we are just arriving,” she added, after a moment; “we must not call for remark. You and I, we are two poor women setting out upon the world—upon a forlorn hope. Yes, that is it—upon a forlorn hope. We don’t look like heroes, but that is what we are going to do, without any banners flying, or music, but a good heart, Jane—a good heart!”
With these words, she stepped out upon the crowded pavement at the great London station. It was a very early hour in the morning, and there were few people except the travellers and the porters about. They had no luggage, which was a thing that confused Jane, and made her ashamed to the bottom of her heart. She answered the questions of the porter with a confused consciousness of something half disgraceful in their denuded condition, and gave her bag into his hands with a shrinking and trembling which made the poor soul, pallid with unaccustomed travelling, and out of her usual prim order, look like a furtive fugitive. She half thought the man looked at her as if she were a criminal escaping from justice. Jane was ashamed: she thought the people in the streets looked at the cab as it rattled out of the station with suspicion and surprise. She looked forward to the arrival at the hotel with a kind of horror. What would people think? Jane felt the real misery of the catastrophe more than any one except the chief sufferer: she looked forward to the new life about to begin with dismay; but nevertheless, at this miserable moment, to come to London without luggage gave her the deepest pang of all.
Mrs. Trevanionremained for some time in London, where she was joined reluctantly, after a few days, by Edmund. This young man had not been educated on the level of Highcourt. He had been sent to a cheap school. He had never known any relations, nor had any culture of the affections to refine his nature. From his school, as soon as he was old enough, he had been transferred to an office in Liverpool, where all the temptations and attractions of the great town had burst upon him without defence. Many young men have to support this ordeal, and even for those who do not come through it without scathe, it is yet possible to do so without ruinous loss and depreciation. But in that case the aberration must be but temporary, and there must be a higher ideal behind to defend the mind against that extinction of all belief in what is good which is the most horrible result of vicious living. Whether Edmund fell into the absolute depths of vice at all it is not necessary to inquire. He fell into debt, and into unlawful ways of making up for his debts. When discovery was not to be staved off any longer he had fled, not even then touched with any compunction or shame, but with a strong certainty that the matter against him would never be allowed to come to a public issue, it being so necessary to the credit of the family that his relations with Highcourt should never be made known to the world. It was with this certainty that he had come to the village near Highcourt at the beginning of Mr. Trevanion’s last illness. To prevent him from bursting into her husband’s presence, and bringing on one of the attacks which sapped his strength, Mrs. Trevanion hadyielded to his demands on her, and, as these increased daily, had exposed herself to remark and scandal, and, as it proved, to ruin and shame. Did she think of that as he sat opposite to her at the table, affording reluctantly the information she insisted upon, betraying by almost every word a mind so much out of tune with hers that the bond which connected them seemed impossible? If she did think of this it was with the bitterest self-reproach, rather than any complaint of him. “Poor boy,” she said to herself, with her heart bleeding. She had informed him of the circumstances under which she had left home, but without a word of blame or intimation that the fault was his, and received what were really his reproaches on this matter silently, with only that heart-breaking smile in her eyes, which meant indulgence unbounded, forgiveness beforehand of anything he might do or say. When Russell, breathing hatred and hostility, came across her path, it was with the same sentiment that Madam had succored the woman who had played so miserable a part in the catastrophe. The whole history of the event was so terrible that she could bear no comment upon it. Even Jane did not venture to speak to her of the past. She was calm, almost cheerful, in what she was doing at the moment, and she had a great deal to do.
The first step she took was one which Edmund opposed with all his might, with a hundred arguments more or less valid, and a mixture of terror and temerity which it humiliated her to be a witness of. He was ready to abandon all possibility of after-safety or of recovery of character, to fly as a criminal to the ends of the earth, or to keep in hiding in holes and corners, liable to be seized upon at any moment; but to take any step to atone for what he had done, to restore the money, or attempt to recover the position of a man innocent, or at least forgiven, were suggestions that filled him with passion. He declared that such an attempt would be ineffectual, that it would end by landing him in prison, that it was madness to think she could do anything. She! so entirely ignorantof business as she was. He ended, indeed, by denouncing her as his certain ruin, when, in spite of all these arguments, she set out for Liverpool, and left him in a paroxysm of angry terror, forgetting both respect and civility in the passion of opposition. Madam Trevanion did not shrink from this any more than from the other fits of passion to which she had been exposed in her life. She went to Liverpool alone, without even the company and support of Jane. And there she found her mission not without difficulty. But the aspect of the woman to whom fate had done its worst, who was not conscious of the insignificant pain of a rebuff from a stranger, she who had borne every anguish that could be inflicted upon a woman, had an impressive influence which in the end triumphed over everything opposed to her. She told the young man’s story with a composure from which it was impossible to divine what her own share in it was, but with a pathos which touched the heart of the master, who was not a hard man, and who knew the dangers of such a youth better than she did. In the end she was permitted to pay the money, and to release the culprit from all further danger. Her success in this gave her a certain hope. As she returned her mind went forward with something like a recollection of its old elasticity, to what was at least a possibility in the future. Thus made free, and with all the capacities of youth in him, might not some softening and melting of the young man’s nature be hoped for—some development of natural affection, some enlargement of life? She said to herself that it might be so. He was not bad nor cruel—he was only unaccustomed to love and care, careless, untrained to any higher existence, unawakened to any better ideal. As she travelled back to London she said to herself that he must have repented his passion, that some compunction must have moved him, even, perhaps, some wish to atone. “He will come to meet me,” she said to herself, with a forlorn movement of anticipation in her mind. She felt so sure as she thought of this expedient,by which he might show a wish to please her without bending his pride to confess himself in the wrong, that when she arrived and, amid the crowds at the railway, saw no one, her heart sank a little. But in a moment she recovered, saying to herself, “Poor boy! why should he come?” He had never been used to render such attentions. He was uneasy in the new companionship, to which he was unaccustomed. Perhaps, indeed, he was ashamed, wounded, mortified, by the poor part he played in it. To owe his deliverance even to her might be humiliating to his pride. Poor boy! Thus she explained and softened everything to herself.
But Mrs. Trevanion found herself now the subject of a succession of surprises very strange to her. She was brought into intimate contact with a nature she did not understand, and had to learn the very alphabet of a language unknown to her, and study impulses which left all her experience of human nature behind, and were absolutely new. When he understood that he was free, that everything against him was wiped off, that he was in a position superior to anything he had ever dreamed of, without need to work or deny himself, his superficial despair gave way to a burst of pleasure and self-congratulation. Even then he was on his guard not to receive with too much satisfaction the advantages of which he had in a moment become possessed, lest perhaps he should miss something more that might be coming. The unbounded delight which filled him when he found himself in London, with money in his pocket, and freedom, showed itself, indeed, in every look; but he still kept a wary eye upon the possibilities of the future, and would not allow that what he possessed was above his requirements or hopes. And when he perceived that the preparations for a further journey were by no means interrupted, and that Mrs. Trevanion’s plan was still to go abroad, his disappointment and vexation were not to be controlled.
“What should you go abroad for?” he said. “We’re farbetter in London. There is everything in London that can be desired. It is the right place for a young fellow like me. I have never had any pleasure in my life, nor the means of seeing anything. And here, the moment I have something in my power, you want to rush away.”
“There is a great deal to see on the other side of the Channel, Edmund.”
“I dare say—among foreigners whose language one doesn’t know a word of. And what is it, after all? Scenery, or pictures, and that sort of thing. Whereas what I want to see is life.”
She looked at him with a strange understanding of all that she would have desired to ignore, knowing what he meant by some incredible pang of inspiration, though she had neither any natural acquaintance with such a strain of thought nor any desire to divine it. “There is life everywhere,” she said, “and I think it will be very good for you, Edmund. You are not very strong, and there are so many things to learn.”
“I see. You think, as I am, that I am not much credit to you, Mrs. Trevanion, of Highcourt. But there might be different opinions about that.” Offence brought a flush of color to his cheek. “Miss Trevanion, of Highcourt, was not so difficult to please,” he added, with a laugh of vanity. “She showed no particular objections to me; but you have ruined me there, I suppose, once for all.”
This attack left her speechless. She could not for the moment reply, but only looked at him with that appeal in her eyes, to which, in the assurance not only of his egotism, but of his total unacquaintance with what was going on in her mind, her motives and ways of thinking, he was utterly insensible. This, however, was only the first of many arguments on the subject which filled those painful days. When he saw that the preparations still went on, Edmund’s disgust was great.
“I see Jane is still going on packing,” he said. “You don’tmind, then, that I can’t bear it? What should you drag me away for? I am quite happy here.”
“My dear,” she said, “you were complaining yourself that you have not anything to do. You have no friends here.”
“Nor anywhere,” said Edmund; “and whose fault is that?”
“Perhaps it is my fault. But that does not alter the fact, Edmund. If I say that I am sorry, that is little, but still it does not mend it. In Italy everything will amuse you.”
“Nothing will amuse me,” said the young man. “I tell you I don’t care for scenery. What I want to see is life.”
“In travelling,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “you often make friends, and you see how the people of other countries live, and you learn—”
“I don’t want to learn,” he cried abruptly. “You are always harping upon that. It is too late to go to school at my age. If I have no education you must put up with it, for it is your fault. And what I want is to stay here. London is the place to learn life and everything. And if you tell me that you couldn’t get me plenty of friends, if you chose to exert yourself, I don’t believe you. It’s because you won’t, not because you can’t.”
“Edmund!”
“Oh, don’t contradict me, for I know better. There is one thing I want above all others, and I know you mean to go against me in that. If you stay here quiet, you know very well they will come to town like everybody else, for the season, and then you can introduce me. She knows me already. The last time she saw me she colored up. She knew very well what I was after. This has always been in my mind since the first time I saw her with you. She is fond of you. She will be glad enough to come, if it is even on the sly—”
He was very quick to see when he had gone wrong, and the little cry that came from her lips, the look that came over her face, warned him a moment too late. He “colored up,” as hesaid, crimson to the eyes, and endeavored with an uneasy laugh to account for his slip. “The expression may be vulgar,” he said, “but everybody uses it. And that’s about what it would come to, I suppose.”
“You mistake me altogether, Edmund,” she said. “I will not see any one on the sly, as you say; and especially not— Don’t wound me by suggesting what is impossible. If I had not known that I had no alternative, can you suppose I should have left them at all?”
“That’s a different matter; you were obliged to do that; but nobody could prevent you meeting them in the streets, seeing them as they pass, saying ‘How do you do?’ introducing a relation—”
She rose up, and began to pace about the room in great agitation. “Don’t say any more, don’t torture me like this,” she said. “Can you not understand how you are tearing me to pieces? If I were to do what you say, I should be dishonest, false both to the living and the dead. And it would be better to be at the end of the world than to be near them in a continual fever, watching, scheming, for a word. Oh, no! no!” she said, wringing her hands, “do not let me be tempted beyond my strength. Edmund, for my sake, if for no other, let us go away.”
He looked at her with a sort of cynical observation, as she walked up and down the room with hurried steps at first, then calming gradually. He repeated slowly, with a half laugh, “For your sake? But I thought everything now was to be for my sake. And it is my turn; you can’t deny that.”
Mrs. Trevanion gave him a piteous look. It was true that it was his turn; and it was true that she had said all should be for him in her changed life. He had her at an advantage; a fact which to her finer nature seemed the strongest reason for generous treatment, but not to his.
“It is all very well to speak,” he continued; “but if you really mean well by me, introduce me to Rosalind. That wouldbe the making of me. She is a fine girl, and she has money; and she would be just as pleased—”
She stopped him, after various efforts, almost by force, seizing his arm. “There are some things,” she said, “that I cannot bear. This is one of them. I will not have her name brought in—not even her name—”
“Why not? What’s in her name more than another? A rose, don’t you know, by any other name—” he said, with a forced laugh. But he was alarmed by Mrs. Trevanion’s look, and the clutch which in her passion she had taken of his arm. After all, his new life was dependent upon her, and it might be expedient not to go too far.
This interlude left her trembling and full of agitation. She did not sleep all night, but moved about the room, in her dingy London lodging, scarcely able to keep still. A panic had seized hold upon her. She sent for him in the morning as soon as he had left his room, which was not early; and even he observed the havoc made in her already worn face by the night. She told him that she had resolved to start next day. “I did not perceive,” she said, “all the dangers of staying, till you pointed them out to me. If I am to be honest, if I am to keep any one’s esteem, I must go away.”
“I don’t see it,” he said, somewhat sullenly. “It’s all your fancy. When a person’s in hiding, he’s safer in London than anywhere else.”
“I am not in hiding,” she said, hastily, with a sense of mingled irritation and despair. For what words could be used which he would understand, which would convey to him any conception of what she meant? They were like two people speaking different languages, incapable of communicating to each other anything that did not lie upon the surface of their lives. When he perceived at last how much in earnest she was, how utterly resolved not to remain, he yielded, but without either grace or good humor. He had not force enough in himself to resist when it came to a distinct issue. Thus they departedtogether into the world unknown—two beings absolutely bound to each other, each with no one else in the world to turn to, and yet with no understanding of each other, not knowing the very alphabet of each other’s thoughts.
ThusMrs. Trevanion went away out of reach and knowledge of everything that belonged to her old life. She had not been very happy in that life. The principal actor in it, her husband, had regarded her comfort less than that of his horses or hounds. He had filled her existence with agitations, but yet had not made life unbearable until the last fatal complications had arisen. She had been surrounded by people who understood her more or less, who esteemed and approved her, and she had possessed in Rosalind the sweetest of companions, one who was in sympathy with every thought, who understood almost before she was conscious of thinking at all; a creature who was herself yet not herself, capable of sharing everything and responding at every point. And, except her husband, there was no one who regarded Madam Trevanion with anything but respect and reverence. No one mistook the elevation of her character. She was regarded with honor wherever she went, her opinions prized, her judgment much considered. When a woman to whom this position has been given suddenly descends to find herself in the sole company of one who cares nothing for her judgment, to whom all her opinions are antiquated or absurd, and herself one of those conventional female types without logic or reason, which are all that some men know of women, the confusing effect which is produced upon earth and heaven is too wonderful for words. More than any change of events, this change of position confuses and overwhelms the mind. Sometimes it is the dismal result of an ill-considered marriage. Sometimes it appears in other relationships. She was pulledrudely down from the pedestal she had occupied so long, and rudely, suddenly, made to feel that she was no oracle, that her words had no weight because she said them, but rather carried with them a probability of foolishness because they were hers. The wonder of this bewildered at first; it confused her consciousness, and made her insecure of herself. And at last it produced the worse effect of making everything uncertain to her. Though she had been supposed so self-sustained and strong in character, she was too natural a woman not to be deeply dependent upon sympathy and the support of understanding. When these failed she tottered and found no firm footing anywhere. Perhaps she said to herself she was really foolish, as Edmund thought, unreasonable, slow to comprehend all character that was unlike her own. She was no longer young; perhaps the young were wiser, had stronger lights; perhaps her beliefs, her prejudices, were things of the past. All this she came to think with wondering pain when the support of general faith and sympathy was withdrawn. It made her doubtful of everything she had done or believed, timid to speak, watching the countenance of the young man whose attitude towards her had changed all the world to her. This was not part of the great calamity that had befallen her. It was something additional, another blow; to be parted from her children, to sustain the loss of all things dear to her, was her terrible fate, a kind of vengeance for what was past; but that her self-respect, her confidence, should thus be taken away from her was another distinct and severe calamity. Sometimes the result was a mental giddiness, a quiver about her of the atmosphere and all the solid surroundings, as though there was (but in a manner unthought of by Berkeley) nothing really existent but only in the thoughts of those who beheld it. Perhaps her previous experiences had led her towards this; for such had been the scope of all her husband’s addresses to her for many a day. But she had not been utterly alone with him, she had felt the strong support of other people’s faith and approval holding herup and giving her strength. Now all these accessories had failed her. Her world consisted of one soul, which had no faith in her; and thus, turned back upon herself, she faltered in all her moral certainties, and began to doubt whether she had ever been right, whether she had any power to judge, or perception, or even feeling, whether she were not perhaps in reality the conventional woman, foolish, inconsistent, pertinacious, which she appeared through Edmund’s eyes.
The other strange, new sensations that Madam encountered in these years, while her little children throve and grew under the care of Mrs. Lennox, and Rosalind developed into the full bloom of early womanhood, were many and various. She had thought herself very well acquainted with the mysteries of human endurance, but it seemed to her now that at the beginning of that new life she had known nothing of them. New depths and heights developed every day; her own complete breaking down and the withdrawal from her of confidence in herself being the great central fact of all. On Edmund’s side the development too was great. He had looked and wished for pleasure and ease and self-indulgence when he had very little power of securing them. When by a change of fortune so extraordinary and unexpected he actually obtained the means of gratifying his instincts, he addressed himself to the task with a unity of purpose which was worthy of a greater aim. He was drawn aside from his end by no glimmer of ambition, no impulse to make something better out of his life. His imperfect education and ignorance of what was best in existence had perhaps something to do with this. To him, as to many a laboring man, the power of doing no work, nor anything but what he pleased, seemed the most supreme of gratifications. He would not give himself the trouble to study anything, even the world, confident as only the ignorant are in the power of money, and in that great evidence that he had become one of the privileged classes, the fact that he did not now need to do anything for his living. He was not absolutely bad or cruel; he only preferredhis own pleasure to anybody else’s, and was a little contemptuous of a woman’s advice and intolerant of her rule and impatient of her company. Perhaps her idea that she owed herself to him, that it was paying an old debt of long-postponed duty to devote herself to him now, to do her best for him, to give him everything in her power that could make him happy, was a mistaken one from the beginning. She got to believe that she was selfish in remaining with him, while still feeling that her presence was the only possible curb upon him. How was she to find a way of serving him best, of providing for all his wants and wishes, of keeping him within the bounds of possibility, yet letting him be free from the constraint of her presence? As time went on, this problem became more and more urgent, yet by the same progress of time her mind grew less and less clear on any point. The balance of the comparative became more difficult to carry. There was no absolute good within her reach, and she would not allow even to herself that there was any absolute bad in the young man’s selfish life. It was all comparative, as life was. But to find the point of comparative advantage which should be best for him, where he should be free without being abandoned, and have the power of shaping his course as he pleased without the power of ruining himself and her—this became more and more the engrossing subject of her thoughts.
As for Edmund, though he indulged in many complaints and grumbles as to having always a woman at his heels, his impatience never went the length of emancipating himself. On the whole, his indolent nature found it most agreeable to have everything done for him, to have no occasion for thought. He had the power always of complaint, which gave him a kind of supremacy without responsibility. His fixed grievance was that he was kept out of London; his hope, varying as they went and came about the world, that somewhere they would meet the family from which Mrs. Trevanion had been torn, and that “on the sly,” or otherwise (though he never repeated those unluckywords), he might find himself in a position to approach Rosalind. In the meantime he amused himself in such ways as were practicable, and spent a great deal of money, and got a certain amount of pleasure out of his life. His health was not robust, and when late hours and amusements told upon him he had the most devoted of nurses. On the whole, upon comparison with the life of a clerk on a small salary in a Liverpool office, his present existence was a sort of shabby Paradise.
About the time when Rosalind heard from Mr. Rivers of that chance encounter which revived all her longings for her mother, and at the same time all the horror of vague and miserable suspicion which surrounded Mrs. Trevanion’s name, a kind of crisis had occurred in this strange, wandering life. Edmund had fallen ill, more seriously than before, and in the quiet of convalescence after severe suffering had felt certain compunctions cross his mind. He had acknowledged to his tender nurse that she was very kind to him. “If you would not nag a fellow so,” he said, “and drive me about so that I don’t know what I am doing, I think, now that I am used to your ways, we might get on.”
Mrs. Trevanion did not defend herself against the charge of “nagging” or “driving” as she might perhaps have done at an earlier period, but accepted with almost grateful humility the condescension of this acknowledgment. “In the meantime,” she said, “you must get well, and then, please God, everything will be better.”
“If you like to make it so,” he said, already half repentant of the admission he had made. And then he added, “If you’d only give up this fancy of yours for foreign parts. Why shouldn’t we go home? You may like it, you speak the language, and so forth: but I detest it. If you want to please me and make me get well, let’s go home.”
“We have no home to go to, Edmund—”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, you know. You don’t suppose I mean the sort of fireside business. Nothing is so easy asto get a house in London; and you know that is what I like best.”
“Edmund, how could I live in a house in London?” she said. “You must remember that a great deal has passed that is very painful. I could not but be brought in contact with people who used to know me—”
“Ah!” he cried, “here’s the real reason at last. I thought all this time it was out of consideration for me, to keep me out of temptation, and that sort of thing; but now it crops up at last. It’s for yourself, after all. It is always an advance to know the true reason. And what could they do to you, those people with whom you might be brought in contact?”
She would not perhaps have said anything about herself had he not beguiled her by the momentary softness of his tone. And now one of those rapid scintillations of cross light which were continually gleaming upon her life and motives flashed over her and changed everything. To be sure! it was selfishness, no doubt, though she had not seen it so. She answered, faltering a little: “They could do nothing to me. Perhaps you are right, Edmund. It may be that I have been thinking too much of myself. But I am sure London would not be good for you. To live there with comfort you must have something to do, or you must have—friends—”
“Well!” he said, with a kind of defiance.
“You have no friends, Edmund.”
“Well,” he repeated, “whose fault is that? It is true that I have no friends; but I could have friends and everything else if you would take a little trouble—more than friends; I might marry and settle. You could do everything for me in that way if you would take the trouble. That’s what I want to do; but I suppose you would rather drag me forever about with you than see me happy in a place of my own.”
Mrs. Trevanion had lost her beauty. She was pale and worn as if twenty additional years had passed over her head instead of two. But for a moment the sudden flush that warmed andlighted up her countenance restored to her something of her prime. “I think,” she said, “Edmund, if you will let me for a moment believe what I am saying, that, to see you happy and prosperous, I would gladly die. I know you will say my dying would be little to the purpose; but the other I cannot do for you. To marry requires a great deal that you do not think of. I don’t say love, in the first place—”
“You may if you please,” he said. “I’m awfully fond of— Oh, I don’t mind saying her name. You know who I mean. If you were good enough for her, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be good enough for her. You have only got to introduce me, which you can if you like, and all the rest I take in my own hands.”
“I was saying,” she repeated, “that love, even if love exists, is not all. Before any girl of a certain position would be allowed to marry, the man must satisfy her friends. His past, and his future, and the means he has, and how he intends to live—all these things have to be taken into account. It is not so easy as you think.”
“That is all very well,” said Edmund; though he paused with a stare of mounting dismay in his beautiful eyes, larger and more liquid than ever by reason of his illness—those eyes which haunted Rosalind’s imagination. “That is all very well: but it is not as if you were a stranger: when they know who I am—when I have you to answer for me—”
A flicker of self-assertion came into her eyes. “Why do you think they should care for me or my recommendation? You do not,” she said.
He laughed. “That’s quite different. Perhaps they know more—and I am sure they know less—than I do. I should think you would like them to know about me for your own sake.”
She turned away with once more a rapid flush restoring momentary youth to her countenance. She was so changed that it seemed to her, as she caught a glimpse of herself, languidlymoving across the room, in the large, dim mirror opposite, that no one who belonged to her former existence would now recognize her. And there was truth in what he said. It would be better for her, for her own sake, that the family from whom she was separated should know everything there was to tell. After the first horror lest they should know, there had come a revulsion of feeling, and she had consented in her mind that to inform them of everything would be the best, though she still shrank from it. But even if she had strength to make that supreme effort it could do her no good. Nothing, they had said, no explanation, no clearing up, would ever remove the ban under which she lay. And it would be better to go down to her grave unjustified than to place Rosalind in danger. She looked back upon the convalescent as he resumed fretfully the book which was for the moment his only way of amusing himself. Illness had cleared away from Edmund’s face all the traces of self-indulgence which she had seen there. It was a beautiful face, full of apparent meaning and sentiment, the eyes full of tenderness and passion—or at least what might seem so in other lights, and to spectators less dismally enlightened than herself. A young soul like Rosalind, full of faith and enthusiasm, might take that face for the face of a hero, a poet. Ah! this was a cruel thought that came to her against her will, that stabbed her like a knife as it came. She said to herself tremulously that in other circumstances, with other people, he might have been, might even be, all that his face told. Only with her from the beginning everything had gone wrong—which again, in some subtile way, according to those revenges which everything that is evil brings with it, was her fault and not his. But Rosalind must not be led to put her faith upon promises which were all unfulfilled. Rosalind must not run any such risk. Whatever should happen, she could not expose to so great a danger another woman, and that her own child.
But there were other means of setting the wheels of fate in motion, with which Madame Trevanion had nothing to do.
Towardsthe end of the summer, during the height of which Mrs. Lennox’s party had returned to the Italian lakes, one of the friends she made at Cadenabbia represented to that good woman that her rheumatism, from which she had suffered during the winter, though perhaps not quite so severely as she imagined, made it absolutely necessary to go through a “cure” at Aix-les-Bains, where, as everybody knows, rheumatism is miraculously operated upon by the waters. Aunt Sophy was very much excited by this piece of advice. In the company which she had been frequenting of late, at thetables d’hôteand in the public promenades, she had begun to perceive that it was scarcely respectable for a person of a certain age not to go through a yearly “cure” at some one or other of a number of watering-places. It indicated a state of undignified health and robustness which was not quite nice for a lady no longer young. There were many who went to Germany, to the differentbadsthere, and a considerable number whose “cure” was in France, and some even who sought unknown springs in Switzerland and Italy; but, taken on the whole, very few indeed were the persons over fifty of either sex who did not reckon a “cure” occupying three weeks or so of the summer or autumn as a necessary part of the routine of life. To all Continental people it was indispensable, and there were many Americans who crossed the ocean for this purpose, going to Carlsbad or to Kissingen or somewhere else with as much regularity as if they had lived within a railway journey of the place. Only the English were careless on so important a subject, but even among them many become convinced of the necessity day by day.
Mrs. Lennox, when this idea fully penetrated her mind, and she had blushed to think how far she was behind in so essential a particular of life, had a strong desire to go to Homburg, where all the “best people” went, and where there was quite a little supplementary London season, after the conclusion of the genuine article. But, unfortunately, there was nothing the matter with her digestion. Her rheumatism was the only thing she could bring forward as entitling her to any position at all among the elderly ladies and gentlemen who in August were setting out for, or returning from, their “cures.” “Oh, then, of course, it is Aix you must go to,” her informants said; “it is a little late, perhaps, in September—most of the best people will have gone—still, you know, the waters are just as good, and the great heat is over. You could not do better than Aix.” One of the ladies who thus instructed her was even kind enough to suggest the best hotel to go to, and to proffer her own services, as knowing all about it, to write and secure rooms for her friend. “It is a pity you did not go three weeks ago, when all the best people were there; but, of course, the waters are just the same,” this benevolent person repeated. Mrs. Lennox became, after a time, very eager on this subject. She no longer blushed when her new acquaintances talked of their cure. She explained to new-comers, “It is a little late, but it did not suit my arrangements before; and, of course, the waters are the same, though the best people are gone.” Besides, it was always, she said, on the way home, whatever might happen.
They set off accordingly, travelling in a leisurely way, in the beginning of September. Mrs. Lennox felt that it was expedient to go slowly, to have something of the air of an invalid before she began her “cure.” Up to this moment she had borne a stray twinge of pain when it came, in her shoulder or her knee, and thought it best to say nothing about it; but now she made a little grimace when that occurred, and said, “Oh, my shoulder!” or complained of being stiff when she got out ofthe carriage. It was only right that she should feel her ailments a little more than usual when she began her cure.
The hotels were beginning to empty when the English party, so helpless, so used to comfort, so inviting to everybody that wanted to make money out of them, appeared. They were received, it is needless to say, with open arms, and had the best suites of rooms to choose from. Mrs. Lennox felt herself to grow in importance from the moment she entered the place. She felt more stiff than ever when she got out of the carriage and was led up-stairs, the anxious landlady suggesting that there was a chair in which she could be carried to her apartment if the stairs were too much for her. “Oh, I think I can manage to walk up if I am not hurried,” Aunt Sophy said. It would have been quite unkind, almost improper, not to adopt therôlewhich suited the place. She went up quite slowly, holding by the baluster, while the children, astonished, crowded up after her, wondering what had happened. “I think I will take your arm, Rosalind,” murmured the simple woman. She did really feel much stiffer than usual; and then there was that pain in her shoulder. “I am so glad I have suffered myself to be persuaded to come. I wonder Dr. Tennant did not order me here long ago; for I really think in my present condition I never should have been able to get home.” Even Rosalind was much affected by this suggestion, and blamed herself for never having discovered how lame Aunt Sophy was growing. “But it is almost your own fault, for you never showed it,” she said. “My dear, I did not, of course, want to make you anxious,” replied Mrs. Lennox.
The doctor came next morning, and everything was settled about the “cure.” He told the new-comers that there were still a good many people in Aix, and that all the circumstances were most favorable. Mrs. Lennox was taken to her bath in a chair the day after, and went through all the operations which the medical man thought requisite. He spoke excellent English—which was such a comfort. He told his patient that the air ofthe place where the cure was to be effected often seemed to produce a temporary recrudescence of the disease. Aunt Sophy was much exhilarated by this word. She talked of this chance of a recrudescence in a soft and subdued tone, such as became her invalid condition, and felt a most noble increase of dignity and importance as she proceeded with her “cure.”
Rosalind was one of the party who took least to this unexpected delay. She had begun to be very weary of the travelling, the monotony of the groups of new acquaintances all so like each other, the atmosphere of hotels, and all the vulgarities of a life in public. To the children it did not matter much; they took their walks all the same whether they were at the Elms or Aix-les-Bains, and had their nursery dinner at their usual hour, whatever happened. The absorption of Mrs. Lennox in her “cure” threw Rosalind now entirely upon the society of these little persons. She went with them, or rather they went with her, in her constant expeditions to the lake, which attracted her more than the tiresome amusements of the watering-place, and thus all their little adventures and encounters—incidents which in other circumstances might have been overlooked—became matters of importance to her.
It was perhaps because he was the only boy in the little feminine party, or because he was the youngest, that Johnny was invariably the principal personage in all these episodes of childish life. He it was whom the ladies admired, whom strangers stopped to talk to, who was the little hero of every small excitement. His beautiful eyes, the boyish boldness which contrasted so strongly with little Amy’s painful shyness, and even with his own little pale face and unassured strength, captivated the passers-by. He was the favorite of the nursery, which was now presided over by a nurse much more enlightened than Russell, a woman recommended by the highest authorities, and who knew, or was supposed to know, nothing of the family history. Rosalind had heard vaguely, without paying much attention, of various admirers who had paid theirtribute to the attractions of her little brother, but it was not until her curiosity was roused by the appearance of a present in the form of a handsome and expensive mechanical toy, the qualities of which Johnny expounded with much self-importance and in a loud voice, that she was moved to any remark. The children were on the floor near her, full of excitement. “Now it shall run round and round, and now it shall go straight home,” Johnny said, while Amy watched and listened ecstatically, a little maiden of few words, whose chief qualities were a great power of admiration and a still greater of love.
Rosalind was seated musing by the window, a little tired, wondering when the “cure” would be over, and if Aunt Sophy would then recover the use of her limbs again, and consent to go home. Mrs. Lennox was always good and kind, and the children were very dear to their mother-sister; but now and then, not always, perhaps not often, there comes to a young woman like Rosalind a longing for companionship such as neither aunts or children can give. Neither the children nor her aunt shared her thoughts; they understood her very imperfectly on most occasions; they had love to give her, but not a great deal more. She sighed, as people do when there is something wanting to them, then turned upon herself with a kind of rage and asked, “What did she want?” as girls will do on whom it has been impressed that this wish for companionship is a thing that is wrong, perhaps unmaidenly. But, after all, there was no harm in it. Oh, that Uncle John were here! she said to herself. Even Roland Hamerton would have been something. He could have tried at least his very best to think as she did. Oh, that—! She did not put any name to this aspiration. She was not very sure who—which—it meant, and then she breathed a still deeper sigh, and tears came to her eyes. Oh! forherof whom nobody knew where she was wandering or in what circumstances she might be. She heard the children’s voices vaguely through her thinking, and by and by a word caught her ear.
“The lady said I was to do it like this. She did it for me on the table out in the garden. It nearly felled down,” said Johnny, “and then it would have broken itself, so she put it on the ground and went down on her knees.”
“Oh, what did she go on her knees for, like saying her prayers, Johnny?”
“Nothin’ of the sort. She just went down like this and caught hold of me. I expose,” said Johnny, whose language was not always correct, “she is stiff, like Aunt Sophy; for I was far more stronger and kept her up.”
“Who is this that he is talking of, Amy?” Rosalind said.
The little girl gave her a look which had some meaning in it, Rosalind could not tell what, and, giving Johnny a little push with her arm after the easy method of childhood, said, “Tell her,” turning away to examine the toy.
“It was the lady,” Johnny said, turning slightly round as on a pivot, and lifting to her those great eyes which Aunt Sophy had said were like—and which always went straight to Rosalind’s heart.
“What lady, dear? and where did you get that beautiful toy?” Rosalind followed the description the child had been giving, and came and knelt on the carpet beside him. “How pretty it is! Did Aunt Sophy give you that?”
“It was the lady,” Johnny repeated.
“What lady? Was it a stranger, Amy, that gave him such a beautiful toy?”
“I think, Miss Rosalind,” said the nurse, coming to the rescue, “it is some lady that has lost her little boy, and that he must have been about Master Johnny’s age. I said it was too much, and that you would not like him to take it; but she said the ladies would never mind if they knew it was for the sake of another—that she had lost.”
“Poor lady!” Rosalind said; the tears came to her eyes in sudden sympathy; “that must be so sad, to lose a child.”
“It is the greatest sorrow in this world, to be only sorrow,” the woman said.
“Only sorrow! and what can be worse than that?” said innocent Rosalind. “Is the lady very sad, Johnny? I hope you were good and thanked her for it. Perhaps if I were with him some day she would speak to me.”
“She doesn’t want nobody but me,” said Johnny. “Oh, look! doesn’t it go. It couldn’t go on the ground because of the stones. Amy, Amy, get out of the way, it will run you over. And now it’s going home to take William a message. I whispered in it, so it knows what to say.”
“But I want to hear about the lady, Johnny.”
“Oh, look, look! it’s falled on the carpet; it don’t like the carpet any more than the stones. I expose it’s on the floor it will go best, or on the grass. Nurse, come along, let’s go out and try it on the grass.”
“Johnny, stop! I want to know more about this lady, dear.”
“Oh, there is nothing about her,” cried the little boy, rushing after his toy. Sophy, who had been practising, got up from the piano and came forward to volunteer information.
“She’s an old fright,” said Sophy. “I’ve seen her back—dressed all in mourning, with a thick veil on. She never took any notice of us others that have more sense than Johnny. I could have talked to her, but he can’t talk to anybody, he is so little and so silly. All he can say is only stories he makes up; you think that is clever, but I don’t think it is clever. If I were his—aunt,” said Sophy, with a momentary hesitation, “I would whip him. For all that is lies, don’t you know? You would say it was lies if I said it, but you think it’s poetry because of Johnny. Poetry is lies, Rosalind, yes, and novels too. They’re not true, so what can they be but lies? that’s why I don’t care to read them. No, I never read them, I like what’s true.”
Rosalind caught her book instinctively, which was all she had left. “We did not ask you for your opinion aboutpoetry, Sophy; but if this lady is so kind to Johnny I should like to go and thank her. Next time you see her say that Johnny’s sister would like to thank her. If she has lost her little boy we ought to be very sorry for her,” Rosalind said.
Sophy looked at her with an unmoved countenance. “I think people are a great deal better off that are not bothered with children,” she said; “I should send the little ones home, and then we could do what we liked, and stay as long as we liked,” quoth the little woman of the world.
Johnny’slittle social successes were so frequent that the memory of the poor lady who had lost her child at his age soon died away, and the toy got broken and went the way of all toys. Their life was spent in a very simple round of occupations. Rosalind, whose powers as an artist were not beyond the gentlest level of amateur art, took to sketching, as a means of giving some interest to her idle hours, and it became one of the habits of the family that Aunt Sophy, when well enough to go out for her usual afternoon drive, should deposit her niece and the children on the bank of the lake, the spot which Rosalind had chosen as the subject of a sketch. The hills opposite shone in the afternoon sun with a gray haze of heat softening all their outlines; the water glowed and sparkled in all its various tones of blue, here and there specked by a slowly progressing boat, carrying visitors across to the mock antiquity of Hautecombe.
After the jingle and roll of Mrs. Lennox’s carriage had passed away, the silence of the summer heat so stilled the landscape that the distant clank of the oars on the water produced the highest effect. It was very warm, yet there was something in the haze that spoke of autumn, and a cool but capriciouslittle breeze came now and then from the water. Rosalind, sitting in the shade, with her sketching-block upon her knee, felt that soft indolence steal over her, that perfect physical content and harmony with everything, which takes all impulse from the mind and makes the sweetness of doing nothing a property of the very atmosphere. Her sketch was very unsatisfactory, for one thing: the subject was much too great for her simple powers. She knew just enough to know that it was bad, but not how to do what she wished, to carry out her own ideal. To make out the open secret before her, and perceive how it was that Nature formed those shadows and poured down that light, was possible to her mind but not to her hand, which had not the cunning necessary for the task; but she was clever enough to see her incapacity, which is more than can be said of most amateurs. Her hands had dropped by her side, and her sketch upon her lap. After all, who could hope to put upon paper those dazzling lights, and the differing tones of air and distance, the shadows that flitted over the mountainsides, the subdued radiance of the sky? Perhaps a great artist, Turner or his chosen rival, but not an untrained girl, whose gifts were only for the drawing-room. Rosalind was not moved by any passion of regret on account of her failure. She was content to sit still and vaguely contemplate the beautiful scene, which was half within her and half without. The “inward eye which is the bliss of solitude” filled out the outline of the picture for her as she sat, not thinking, a part of the silent rapture of the scene. The children were playing near her, and their voices, softened in the warm air, made part of the beatitude of the moment—that, and the plash of the water on the shore, and the distant sound of the oars, and the breeze that blew in her face. It was one of those exquisite instants, without any actual cause of happiness in them, when we are happy without knowing why. Such periods come back to the mind as the great events which are called joyful never do—for with events, however joyful, there come agitations,excitements—whereas pure happiness is serene, and all the sweeter for being without any cause.
Thus Rosalind sat—notwithstanding many things in her life which were far from perfect—in perfect calm and pleasure. The nurse, seated lower down upon the beach, was busy with a piece of work, crochet or some other of those useless handiworks which are a refreshment to those who are compelled to be useful for the greater portion of their lives. The children were still nearer to the edge of the water, playing with a little pleasure-boat which was moored within the soft plash of the lake. It was not a substantial craft, like the boats native to the place, which are meant to convey passengers and do serious work, but was a little, gayly painted, pleasure skiff, belonging to an Englishman in the neighborhood, neither safe nor solid—one of the cockleshells that a wrong balance upsets in a moment. It was to all appearance safely attached to something on the land, and suggested no idea of danger either to the elder sister seated above or to the nurse on the beach.
Amy and Johnny had exhausted their imagination in a hundred dramatic plays; they had “pretended” to be kings and queens; to be a lady receiving visitors and a gentleman making a morning call; to be a clergyman preaching to a highly critical and unsatisfactory audience, which would neither stay quiet nor keep still; to be a procession chanting funeral hymns; even coming down sadly from that level of high art to keep a shop, selling pebbles and sand for tea and sugar. Such delights, however, are but transitory; the children, after a while, exhausted every device they could think of; and then they got into the boat, which it was very easy to do. The next thing, as was natural, was to “pretend” to push off and row. And, alas! the very first of these attempts was too successful. The boat had been attached, as it appeared, merely to a small iron rod thrust into the sand, and Johnny, being vigorous and pulling with all his little might—with so much might that he tumbled into the bottom of the boat head over heels in the revulsionof the effort—the hold gave way. Both nurse and sister sat tranquilly, fearing no evil, while this tremendous event took place, and it was not till the shifting of some bright lines in the foreground caught Rosalind’s dreaming eye that the possibility of any accident occurred to her. She sprang to her feet then, with a loud cry which startled the nurse and a group of children playing farther on, on the beach, but no one who could be of any real assistance. The little bright vessel was afloat and already bearing away upon the shining water. In a minute it was out of reach of anything the women could do. There was not a boat or a man within sight; the only hope was in the breeze which directed the frail little skiff to a small projecting point farther on, to which, as soon as her senses came back to her, Rosalind rushed, with what intention she scarcely knew, to plunge into the water though she could not swim, to do something, if it should only be to drown along with them. The danger that the boat might float out into the lake was not all; for any frightened movement, even an attempt to help themselves on the part of the children, might upset the frail craft in a moment, and end their voyage forever.
She flew over the broken ground, stumbling in her hurry and agitation, doing her best to stifle the cries that burst from her, lest she should frighten the little voyagers. For the moment they were quite still, surprise and alarm and a temporary confusion as to what to do having quieted their usual restlessness. Amy’s little face, with a smile on it, gradually growing fixed as fear crept over her which she would not betray, and Johnny’s back as he settled himself on the rowing seat, with his arms just beginning to move towards the oars which Rosalind felt would be instant destruction did he get hold of them, stood out in her eyes as if against a background of flame. It was only the background of the water, all soft and glowing, with scarcely a ripple upon it, safe, so peaceful, and yet death. There could not have been a prettier picture. The boat wasreflected in every tint, the children’s dresses, its own lines of white and crimson, the foolish little flag of the same colors that fluttered at the bow—all prettiness, gayety, a picture that would have delighted a child, softly floating, double, boat and shadow. But never was any scene of prettiness looked at with such despair. “Keep still, keep still,” Rosalind cried, half afraid even to say so much, as she flew along, her brain all one throb. If but the gentle breeze, the current so slight as to be scarcely visible, would drift them to the point! if only her feet would carry her there in time! Her sight seemed to fail her, and yet for years after it was like a picture ineffaceably printed upon her eyes.
She was rushing into the water in despair, with her hands stretched out, but, alas! seeing too clearly that the boat was still out of her reach, and restraining with pain the cry of anguish which would have startled the children, when she felt herself suddenly put aside and a coat, thrown off by some one in rapid motion, fell at her feet. Rosalind did not lose her senses, which were all strung to the last degree of vivid force and capability; but she knew nothing, did not think, was conscious neither of her own existence nor of how this came about, of nothing but the sight before her eyes. She stood among the reeds, her feet in the water, trying to smile to the children, to Amy, upon whom terror was growing, and to keep her own cries from utterance. The plunge of the new-comer in the water startled Johnny. He had got hold of the oar, and in the act of flinging it upon the water with the clap which used to delight him on the lake at home, turned sharply round to see what this new sound meant. Then the light vanished from Rosalind’s eyes. She uttered one cry, which seemed to ring from one end of the lake to the other, and startled the rowers far away on the other side. Then gradually sight came back to her. Had it all turned into death and destruction, that shining water, with its soft reflections, the pretty outline, the floating colors? She heard a sound of voices, the tones of thechildren, and then the scene became visible again, as if a black shadow had been removed. There was the boat, still floating double, Amy’s face full of smiles, Johnny’s voice raised high—“Oh,Icould have doned it!”—a man’s head above the level of the water, a hand upon the side of the boat. Then some one called to her, “No harm done; I will take them back to the beach.” The throbbing went out of Rosalind’s brain and went lower down, till her limbs shook under her, and how to get through the reeds she could not tell. She lifted the coat instinctively and struggled along, taking, it seemed to her, half an hour to retrace the steps which she had made in two minutes in the access of terror which had left her so weak. The nurse, who had fallen helpless on the beach, covering her eyes with her hands not to see the catastrophe, had recovered and got the children in her arms before Rosalind reached them. They were quite at their ease, and skipped about on the shingle, when lifted from the boat, with an air of triumph. “I could have doned it if you had left me alone,” said Johnny, careless of the mingled caresses and reproaches that fell upon him in a torrent—the “Oh, children, you’ve almost killed me!” of nurse, and the passionate clasp with which Rosalind seized upon them. “We were floating beautiful,” said little Amy, oblivious of her terrors; and they began to descant both together upon the delights of their “sail.” “Oh, it is far nicer than those big boats!” “And if he had let me get the oars out I’d have doned it myself,” cried Johnny. The group of children which had been disturbed by the accident stood round, gaping open-mouthed in admiration, and the loud sound of hurrying oars from a boat rushing across the lake to the rescue added to the excitement of the little hero and heroine. Rosalind’s dress was torn with her rush through the reeds, her shoes wet, her whole frame trembling; while nurse had got her tidy bonnet awry and her hair out of order. But the small adventurers had suffered no harm or strain of any kind. They were jaunty in their perfect success and triumph.
“I thought it safest to bring them round to this bit of beach, where they could be landed without any difficulty. Oh, pray don’t say anything about it. It was little more than wading, the water is not deep. And I am amply—Miss Trevanion? I am shocked to see you carrying my coat!”
Rosalind turned to the dripping figure by her side with a cry of astonishment. She had been far too much agitated even to make any question in her mind who it was. Now she raised her eyes to meet—what? the eyes that were like Johnny’s, the dark, wistful, appealing look which had come back to her mind so often. He stood there with the water running from him, in the glow of exertion, his face thinner and less boyish, but his look the same as when he had come to her help on the country road, and by the little lake at Highcourt. It flashed through Rosalind’s mind that he had always come to her help. She uttered the “Oh!” which is English for every sudden wonder, not knowing what to say.
“I hope,” he said, “that you may perhaps remember I once saw you at Highcourt in the old days, in a little difficulty with a boat. This was scarcely more than that.”
“I recollect,” she said, her breath coming fast; “you were very kind—and now— Oh, this is a great deal more; I owe you—their lives.”
“Pray don’t say so. It was nothing—any one would have done it, even if there had been a great deal more to do, but there was nothing; it was little more than wading.” Then he took his coat from her hand, which she had been holding all the time. “It is far more—it is too much that you should have carried my coat, Miss Trevanion. It is more than a reward.”
She had thought of the face so often, the eyes fixed upon her, and had forgotten what doubts had visited her mind when she saw him before. Now, when she met the gaze of those eyes again, all her doubts came back. There was a faint internal struggle, even while she remembered that he had saved thelives of the children. “I know,” she said, recollecting herself, “that we have met before, and that I had other things to thank you for, though nothing like this. But you must forgive me, for I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Everard,” he said, with a little hesitation and a quick flush of color. His face, which had always been refined in feature, had a delicacy that looked like ill-health, and as he pulled on his coat over his wet clothes he shivered slightly. Was it because he felt the chill, or only to call forth the sudden anxiety which appeared in Rosalind’s face? “Oh,” he said, “it was momentary. I shall take no harm.”
“What can we do?” cried Rosalind, with alarm. “If it should make you ill! And you are here perhaps for the baths? and yet have plunged in without thought. What can we do? There is no carriage nor anything to be got. Oh, Mr. Everard! take pity upon me and hasten home.”
“I will walk with you if you will let me.”
“But we cannot go quick, the children are not able; and what if you catch cold! My aunt would never forgive me if I let you wait.”
“There could be nothing improper,” he said hastily, “with the nurse and the children.”
Rosalind felt the pain of this mistaken speech prick her like a pin-point. To think in your innermost consciousness that a man is “not a gentleman” is worse than anything else that can be said of him in English speech. She hesitated and was angry with herself, but yet her color rose high. “What I mean,” she said, with an indescribable, delicate pride, “is that you will take cold—you understand me, surely—you will take cold after being in the water. I beg you to go on without waiting, for the children cannot walk quickly.”
“And you?” he said; still he did not seem to understand, but looked at her with a sort of delighted persuasion that she was avoiding the walk with him coyly, with that feminine withdrawal which leads a suitor on. “You are just as wet as Iam. Could not we two push on and leave the children to follow?”
Rosalind gave him a look which was full of almost despairing wonder. The mind and the words conveyed so different an impression from that made by the refined features and harmonious face. “Oh, please go away,” she said, “I am in misery to see you standing there so wet. My aunt will send to you to thank you. Oh, please go away! If you catch cold we will never forgive ourselves,” Rosalind cried, with an earnestness that brought tears to her eyes.
“Miss Trevanion, that you should care—”
Rosalind, in her heat and eagerness, made an imperious gesture, stamping her foot on the sand in passionate impatience. “Go, go!” she cried. “We owe you the children’s lives, and we shall not forget it—but go!”
He hesitated. He did not believe nor understand her! He looked in her eyes wistfully, yet with a sort of smile, to know how much of it was true. Could any one who was a gentleman have so failed to apprehend her meaning? Yet it did gleam on him at length, and he obeyed her, though reluctantly, turning back half a dozen times in the first hundred yards to see if she were coming. At last a turn in the road hid him from her troubled eyes.