Madam

“What I have wanted! I wanted an heir and a family like other men, and I got a poor little wife who died at nineteen, and a useless slip of a girl. Then my second venture—perhaps you think my second venture was very successful—a fine robust wife, and a mischievous brat like Rex, always in scrapes at school, besides that little spiteful minx Sophy, who would spite her own mother if she could, and the two imps in the nursery. What good are they to me? The boy will succeed me, of course, and keep you out. I had quite as lief you had it, John. You are my own brother, after all, and that boy is more his mother’s than mine. He has those eyes of hers. Lord! what a fool a young fellow is! To imagine I should have given up so much when I ought to have known better, and taken so many burdens on my shoulders for the sake of a pair of fine eyes. They are fine eyes still, but I know the meaning of them now.”

“This is simply brutal, Reginald,” said his brother, in high indignation. He got up to go away, but a sign from Mrs. Trevanion, behind her husband’s back, made him pause.

“Brutal, is it? which means true. Give me some of that eau-de-Cologne. Can’t you be quick about it? You take half an hour to cross the room. I’ve always meant to tell you about that second marriage of mine. I was a fool, and she was— Shall I tell him all about it, Madam? when we met, and how you led me on. By Jove! I have a great mind to publish the whole business, and let everybody know who you are and what you are—or, rather, were when I married you.”

“I wish you would do so, Reginald. The mystery has never been my doing. It would be for my happiness if you would tell John.”

The sick man looked round upon her with a chuckling malice. “She would like to expose herself in order to punish me,” he said. “But I sha’n’t do it; you may dismiss that from your mind. I don’t wish the country to know that my wife was—” Then he ended with a laugh which was so insulting that John Trevanion involuntarily clinched his fist and made a step forward; then recollected himself, and fell back with a suppressed exclamation.

“It is quite natural you should take her part, Jack. She’s a fine woman still of her years, though a good bit older than you would think. How old were you, Madam, when I married you? Oh, old enough for a great deal to have happened—eight-and-twenty or thereabouts—just on the edge of being passée then, the more fool I! Jove! what a fool I was, thrusting my head into the bag. I don’t excuse myself. I posed myself in those days as a fellow that had seen life, and wasn’t to be taken in. But you were too many for me. Never trust to a woman, John, especially a woman that has a history and that sort of thing. You are never up to their tricks. However knowing you may be, take my word for it, they know a thing or two more than you.”

“If you mean to do nothing but insult your wife, Reginald—”

“John, for Heaven’s sake! What does it matter? You will think no worse of me for what he says, and no better. Let him talk!” cried Madam, under her breath.

“What is she saying to you—that I am getting weak in my mind and don’t know what I am saying? Ah! that’s clever. I have always expected something of the sort. Look here, Madam! sit down at once and write to Charley Blake, do you hear? Charley—not the old fellow. Ask him to come here from Saturday to Monday, I want to have a talk with him. You are not fond of Charley Blake. And tell him to bring all his tools with him. He will know”—with a significant laugh—“what I mean.”

She went to the writing-table without a word, and wrote the note. “Will you look at it, Reginald, to see if it is what you wish.”

The patient snarled at her with his laugh. “I can trust you,” he said, “and you shall see when Blake comes.”

“What do you want with Blake, Reginald? Why should you trouble yourself with business in your present state of health? You must have done all that is necessary long ago, I wish you would keep quiet and give yourself a chance.”

“A chance! that’s Beaton’s opinion, I suppose—that I have more than a chance. That’s why you all gather round me like a set of crows, ready to pounce upon the carcass. And Madam, Madam here, can scarcely hold herself in, thinking how soon she will be free.” He pushed back his chair, and gazed from one to another with fiery eyes which seemed ready to burst from their sockets. “A chance! that’s all I’ve got, is it? You needn’t wait for it, John; there’s not a penny for you.”

“Reginald, what the doctor says is that you must be calm, that nothing must be done to bring on those spasms that shake you so. Never mind what John says; he does not know.”

“Oh, you!” cried the sick man; “you—you’ve motive enough. It’s freedom to you. I don’t tell you to scheme for it, I know that’s past praying for. Nobody can doubt it’s worth your while—a good settlement, and freedom to dance on my grave as soon as you like, as soon as you have got me into it. But John has got no motive,” he said again, with a sort of garrulous pathos; “he’ll gain nothing. He’ll rather lose something perhaps, for he couldn’t have the run of the house if it were yours, as he has done all his life. Yours!” the sick man added, with concentrated wrath and scorn; “it shall never be yours; I shall see to that. Where is the note to Charley—Charley Blake? John, take charge of it for me; see that it’s put in the post. She has the bag in her hands, and how can I tell whether she will let it go? She was a great deal too ready to write it, eh? don’t you think, knowing it was against herself?”

After this cheerful morning’s talk, which was the ordinary kind of conversation that went on in Mr. Trevanion’s room, from which John Trevanion could escape and did very shortly, but Madam could not and did not, the heavy day went on, little varied. Mrs. Trevanion appeared at lunch with a sufficiently tranquil countenance, and entered into the ordinary talk of a family party with a composure or philosophy which was a daily miracle to the rest. She checked little Sophy’s impertinences and attended to the small pair of young ones like a mother embarrassed with no cares less ignoble. There was an air of great gravity about her, but not more than the critical condition of her husband’s health made natural. And the vicar, who came in to lunch to ask after the squire, saw nothing in Madam’s manner that was not most natural and seemly. He told his wife afterwards that she took it beautifully; “Very serious, you know, very anxious, but resigned and calm.” Mrs. Vicar was of opinion that were she Mrs. Trevanion she would be more than resigned, for everybody knew that Madam had “a great deal to put up with.” But from her own aspect no one could have told the continual flood of insult to which she was exposed, the secret anxiety that was gnawing at her heart. In the evening, before dinner, she met her brother-in-law by accident before the great fireplace in the hall. She was sitting there, thrown down in one of the deep chairs, like a worn-out creature. It was rare to see her there, though it was the common resort of the household, and so much, in spite of himself, had John Trevanion been moved by the sense of mystery about, and by his brother’s vituperations, that his first glance was one of suspicion. But his approach took her by surprise. Her face was hidden in her hands, and there was an air of abandon in her attitude and figure as if she had thrown herself, like a wounded animal, before the fire. She uncovered her face, and, he thought, furtively, hastily dried her eyes as she turned to see who was coming. Pity was strong in his heart, notwithstanding his suspicion, he came forward and looked down upon her kindly. “I am very glad,” he said, “to see that you are able to get a moment to yourself.”

“Yes,” she said, “Reginald seems more comfortable to-night.”

“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “it is beyond human patience. You ought not to have all this to bear.”

“Oh, nothing is beyond human patience,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a smile. “Never mind, I can bear it very well. After all, there is no novelty in it to wound me. I have been bearing the same sort of thing for many years.”

“And you have borne it without a murmur. You are a very wonderful woman, or—”

“What do you mean? Do you think me a bad one? It would not be wonderful after all you have heard. But I am not a bad woman, John. I am not without blame; who is? But I am not what he says. This is mere weakness to defend myself; but when one has been beaten down all day long by one perpetual flood like a hailstorm— What was that? I thought I heard Reginald’s voice.”

“It was nothing; some of the servants. I am very sorry for you, Grace. If anything can be done to ease you—”

“Nothing can be done. I think talking does him good; and what is the use of a man’s wife if not to hear everything he has to say? It diverts the evil from others, and I hope from himself too. Yes, I do think so; it is an unpleasant way of working it out, and yet I think, like the modes they adopt in surgery sometimes, it relieves the system. So let him talk,” she went on with a sigh. “It will be hard, though, if I am to lose the support of your good opinion, John.”

To this he made no direct answer, but asked, hurriedly, “What do you suppose he wants with Charley Blake? Charley specially, not his father, whom I have more faith in?”

“Something about his will, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not anything of consequence. He tries to scare me, threatening something—but it is not for that that I am afraid.”

“We shall be able to do you justice in that point. Of what are you afraid?”

She rose with a sudden impulse and stood by him in the firelight, almost as tall as he, and with a certain force of indignation in her which gave her an air of command and almost grandeur beside the man who suspected and hesitated. “Nothing!” she said, as if she flung all apprehension from her. John, whose heart had been turned from her, felt himself melting against his will. She repeated after a time, more gently, “I know that if passion can suggest anything it will be done. And he will not have time to reconsider, to let his better nature—” (here she paused, and in spite of herself a faint smile, in which there was some bitterness, passed over her face) “his better nature speak,” she said, slowly; “therefore I am prepared for everything and fear nothing.”

“This sounds not like courage, but despair.”

“And so it is. Is it wonderful that it should be despair rather than courage after all these years? I am sure there is something wrong. Listen; don’t you hear it? That is certainly Reginald’s voice.”

“No, no, you are excited. What could it be? He wants something, perhaps, and he always calls loudly for whatever he wants. It is seldom I can see you for a moment. I want to tell you that I will see Blake and find out from him—”

“I must go to Reginald, John.”

She was interrupted before she had crossed the hall by the sudden appearance of Russell, who pushed through the curtain which hung over the passage leading to Mr. Trevanion’s room, muffling herself in it in her awkwardness. The woman was scared and trembling. “Where’s Madam, Madam?” she said. “She’s wanted; oh, she’s wanted badly! He’s got a fit again.”

Mrs. Trevanion flew past the trembling woman like a shadow. “It is your doing,” she said, with a voice that rung into Russell’s heart. The intruder was entirely unhinged. “I never saw him in one before. It’s dreadful; oh, it’s dreadful! Doctor! doctor! oh, where’s the doctor?” she cried, losing all command of herself, and shrieking forth the name in a way which startled the house. The servants came running from all sides; the children, terror-stricken, half by the cry, half by the sound of Russell’s voice, so familiar to them, appeared, a succession of little wistful faces, upon the stair, while the doctor himself pushed through, startled, but with all his wits about him. “How has it happened? You’ve been carrying your ill-tempered chatter to him. I’ll have you tried for manslaughter,” the doctor said.

CHAPTER XI

Rosalind Trevanion was a girl who had never had a lover—at least, such was her own conviction. She even resented the fact a little, thinking it wonderful that when all the girls in novels possessed such interests she had none. To attain to the mature age of eighteen, in a wealthy and well-known house where there were many visitors, and where she had all the advantages that a good position can give, without ever having received that sign of approbation which is conveyed by a declaration of love, was very strange in the point of view of fiction. And as she had few friends of her own age at hand to consult with, and an absorbing attachment and friendship for an older woman to fill up the void, novels were her chief informants as to the ordinary events of youthful life. It is an unfortunate peculiarity of these works that their almost exclusive devotion to one subject is too likely to confuse the ideas of young women in this particular. In old-fashioned English fiction, and in the latest American variety of the art, no girl who respected herself could be satisfied with less than half a dozen proposals: which is a circumstance likely to rouse painful questionings in the hearts of our young contemporaries. Here was a girl not unconscious that she was what is generally known as “a nice girl,” with everything favorable in her circumstances; and yet she had not as yet either accepted or refused anybody! It was curious. Young Hamerton, who had been staying at Highcourt at the uncomfortable moment already described, was indeed prone to seek her society, and unfolded himself rashly to her in talk, with that indescribable fatuity which young men occasionally show in presence of girls, moved perhaps by the too great readiness of the kind to laugh at their jokes and accept their lead. Rosalind, protected by her knowledge of minds more mature, looked upon Hamerton with a kind of admiring horror, to think how wonderful it was that a man should be a man, and superior to all women, and have an education such as women of ambition admired and envied, and yet be such a –. She did not say fool, being very courteous, and unused to strong language. She only said such a –; and naturally could no more take him into consideration as a lover than if he had been one of the footmen. It was not beyond her consciousness either, perhaps, that Charley Blake, the son and partner of the family lawyer, whom business often brought to Highcourt, contemplated her often with his bold black eyes in a marked and unmistakable way. But that was a piece of presumption which Miss Trevanion thought of as a princess royal might regard the sighs of a courtier. Rosalind had the eclectic and varying political views held by young women of intelligence in the present time. She smiled at the old Toryism about her. She chose her men and her measures from both parties, and gave her favorites a hot but somewhat fluctuating support. She felt very sure that of all things in the world she was not an aristocrat, endeavoring to shut the gates of any exclusive world against success (which she called genius); therefore it could not be this thoroughly old-world feeling which prompted her disdain of Charley Blake. She was of opinion that a poor man of genius struggling upward towards fame was the sublimest sight on earth, and that to help in such a struggle was a far finer thing for a woman to do than to marry a duke or a prince. But no such person had ever come in her way, nor any one else so gifted, so delightful, so brilliant, and so tender as to merit the name of a lover. She was a little surprised, but referred the question to statistics, and said to herself that because of the surplus of women those sort of things did not happen nowadays: though, indeed, this was a theory somewhat invalidated by the fact that most of the young ladies in the county were married or about to be so. The position altogether did not convey any sense of humiliation to Rosalind. It gave her rather a sense of superiority, as of one who lifts her head in native worth superior to the poor appreciation of the crowd. How the sense of being overlooked should carry with it this sense of superiority is for the philosopher to say.

These thoughts belonged to the lighter and happier portion of her life, and were at present subdued by very sombre reflections. When she walked out in the morning after these events there was, however, a certain sense of emancipation in her mind. Her father had again been very ill—so ill that during the whole night the house had been on the alert, and scarcely any one had ventured to go to bed. Rosalind had spent half the night in the hall with her uncle, expecting every moment a summons to the sick-room, to what everybody believed to be the deatbed of the sufferer; and there had crept through the house a whisper, how originating no one could tell, that it was after an interview with Russell that the fit had come on, and that she had carried him some information about Madam which had almost killed him. Nobody had any doubt that it was to Madam that Russell’s report referred, and there were many wonderings and questions in the background, where the servants congregated, as to what it was. That Madam went out of nights; that she met some one in the park, and there had long and agitated interviews; that Jane knew all about it, more than any one, and could ruin her mistress if she chose to speak; but that Russell too had found out a deal, and that it had come to master’s ears through her; and full time it did, for who ever heard of goings-on like this in a gentleman’s house?—this is what was said among the servants. In superior regions nothing was said at all. Rosalind and her uncle kept together, as getting a vague comfort in the universal dreariness from being together. Now and then John Trevanion stole to the door of his brother’s room, which stood open to give all the air possible, to see or hear how things were going. One time when he did so his face was working with emotion.

“Rosalind,” he said, in the whisper which they spoke in, though had they spoken as loudly as their voices would permit no sound could have reached the sick-room; “Rosalind, I think that woman is sublime. She knows that the first thing he will do will be to harm and shame her, and yet there she is, doing everything for him. I don’t know if she is a sinner or not, but she is sublime—”

“Who are you speaking of as that woman?—of MY MOTHER, Uncle John?” cried Rosalind, expanding and growing out of her soft girlhood into a sort of indignant guardian angel. He shook his head impatiently and sat down; and nothing more was said between them till the middle of the night, when Dr. Beaton coming in told them the worst was over, and for the moment the sick man would “pull through.” “But I’ll have that nurse in confinement. I’ll send her to the asylum. It is just manslaughter,” he said. Russell, very pale and frightened, was at her door when Rosalind went up-stairs.

“The doctor says he will have you tried for manslaughter,” Rosalind said, as she passed her. “No, I will not say good-night. You have all but killed papa.”

“It is not I that have killed him,” said Russell; “it’s those that do what they didn’t ought to.”

Rosalind, in her excitement, stamped her foot upon the floor.

“He says you shall be sent to the asylum; and I say you shall be sent away from here. You are a bad woman. Perhaps now you will kill the children to complete your work. We are none of us safe so long as you are here.”

At this Russell gave a bitter cry and threw up her hands to heaven.

“The children,” she cried, “that I love like my own—that I give my heart’s blood for—not safe! Oh, Miss Rosalind! God forgive you!—you, that I have loved the best of all!”

“How should I forgive you?” cried Rosalind, relentless. “I will never forgive you. Hate me if you please, but never dare to say you love me. Love!—you don’t know what it is. You should go away to-night if it were I who had the power and not mamma.”

“She has the power yet. She will not have it long,” the woman cried, in her terror and passion. And she shut herself up in her room, which communicated with the children’s, and flung herself on the floor in a panic which was perhaps as tragical as any of the other sensations of this confused and miserable house.

And yet when Rosalind went out next morning she was able to withdraw herself, in a way inconceivable to any one who has not been young and full of imaginations, from the miseries and terrors of the night. Mr. Trevanion was much exhausted, but living, and in his worn-out, feeble state required constant care and nursing, without being well enough to repay that nursing with abuse, as was his wont. Rosalind, with no one to turn to for companionship, went out and escaped. She got clear of that small, yet so important, world, tingling with emotion, with death and life in the balance, and everything that is most painful in life, and escaped altogether, as if she had possessed those wings of a dove for which we all long, into another large and free and open world, in which there was a wide, delightful air which blew in her face, and every kind of curiosity and interest and hope. How it was she fell to thinking of the curious fact that she had not, and had never had, a lover, at such a moment, who can tell? Perhaps because it occurred to her at first that it would be well to have something, somebody, to escape to and take comfort in, when she was so full of trouble, without knowing that the wide atmosphere and fresh sky and bare trees, that discharged, whenever the breath of the wind touched them, a sharp little shower of rain-drops, were enough at her age to woo her out of the misery which was not altogether personal, though she was so wound up in the lives of all the sufferers. She escaped. That thought about the lover, which was intended to be pathetic, beguiled her into a faint laugh under her breath; for indeed it was amusing, if even only ruefully amusing, to be so unlike the rest of the young world. That opened to her, as it were, the gate; and then her imagination ran on, like the lawless, sweet young rover it was, to all kinds of things amusing and wonderful. Those whose life is all to come, what a playground they have to fly into when the outside is unharmonious! how to fill up all those years; what to do in the time that is endless, that will never be done; how to meet those strange events, those new persons, those delights and wonders that are all waiting round the next and the next corner! If she had thought of it she would have been ashamed of herself for this very amusement, but fortunately she did not think of it, and so let herself go, like the child she was. She took her intended walk through the park, and then, as the morning was bright, after lingering at the gate a little, went out into the road, and turned to the village without any particular intention, because it was near and the red roofs shone in the light. It was a fresh, bright morning, such as sometimes breaks the dulness of November. The sky was as blue as summer, with wandering white cloudlets, and not a sign of any harm, though there had been torrents of rain the night before. Indeed, no doubt it was the pouring down of those torrents which had cleared away the tinge of darkness from the clouds, which were as innocent and filmy and light as if it had been June. Everything was glistening and gleaming with wet, but that only made the country more bright, and as Rosalind looked along the road, the sight of the red village with its smoke rising ethereal into air so pure that it was a happiness to gaze into its limpid, invisible depths, or rather heights, ending in heavens, was enough to cheer any young soul. She went on, with a little sense of adventure, for though she often went to the village, it was rare to this girl to have the privilege of being absolutely alone. The fresh air, the glistening hedgerows, the village roofs, in all the shining of the sunshine, pleased her so much that she did not see till she was close to it a break in the road, where the water which had submerged the low fields on either side had broken across the higher ground, finding a sort of channel in a slight hollow of the road. The sight of a laborer plashing through it, with but little thought, though it came up to the top of his rough boots, arrested Rosalind all at once. What was she to do? Her boots, though with the amount of high heel which only a most independent mind can escape from, were clearly quite unequal to this crossing. She could not but laugh to herself at the small matter which stopped progress, and stood on the edge of it measuring the distance with her eye, and calculating probabilities with a smiling face, amused by the difficulty. While she stood thus she heard a voice behind her calling to the laborer in front. “Hi!” some one said; “Hallo, you there! help me to lift this log over the water, that the lady may cross.” The person appealed to turned round, and so did Rosalind. And then she felt that here was indeed an adventure. Behind her, stooping over some large logs of wood on the side of the pathway, was the man who had looked so intently at the carriage the other day when she passed with her stepmother. Before she saw his face she was sure, with a little jump of her heart, that it was the same man. He was dressed in dark tweed clothes, somewhat rough, which might have been the garb of a gentleman or of a gamekeeper, and did not fit him well, which was more like the latter than the former. She could see, as he stooped, his cheek and throat reddened as with the unusual exertion.

“Oh, please do not take the trouble,” she cried; “it is of no consequence. I have nothing to do in the village.”

“It is no trouble,” he said; and in a minute or two the logs were rolled across the side path so that she could pass. The man who had been called upon to help was one of the farm-laborers whom she knew. She thanked him cheerfully by name, and turned to the stranger, who stood with his hat off, his pale face, which she remembered to have been so pale that she thought him ill, now covered with a brilliant flush which made his eyes shine. Rosalind was startled by the beauty of the face, but it was not like that of the men she was accustomed to see. Something feminine, something delicate and weak, was in it.

“You are very kind to take so much trouble; but I am afraid you have over-exerted yourself,” she cried.