Madam

Young Hamerton in the conservatory naturally had none of these fears. He thought that old Trevanion was (as indeed everybody knew) an old tyrant, a selfish, ill-tempered egoist, caring for nothing but his own indulgences. How he did treat that poor woman, to be sure! a woman far too good for him whether it was true or not that he had married her without a penny. He remembered vaguely that he had never heard who Madam Trevanion was before her marriage. But what of that? He knew what she was: a woman still full of grace and charm, though she was no longer in her first youth. And what a life that old curmudgeon, that selfish old skeleton, with all his fantastical complaints, led her! When a young man has the sort of chivalrous admiration for an elder woman which Roland Hamerton felt for the mistress of this house, he becomes sharp to see the curious subjection, the cruelty of circumstances, the domestic oppressions which encircle so many. And Madam Trevanion was more badly off, more deeply tried, than any other woman, far or near. She was full of spirit and intelligence, and interest in the higher matters of life; yet she was bound to this fretful master, who would not let her out of his sight, who cared for nothing better than a society newspaper, and who demanded absolute devotion, and the submission of all his wife’s wishes and faculties to his. Poor lady! no wonder if she were glad to escape now and then for a moment, to get out of hearing of his sharp voice, which went through your ears like a skewer.

While these thoughts went through young Hamerton’s mind he had gradually made his way through the conservatory, in which there was but one dim lamp burning, to the farther part, which projected out some way with a rounded end into the lawn which immediately surrounded the house. He was much startled, as he looked cautiously forth, without being aware that he was looking, to see something moving, like a repetition of the waving branches and clouds above close to him upon the edge of a path which led through the park. At first it was but movement and no more, indistinguishable among the shadows. But he was excited by what he had been hearing, and his attention was aroused. After a time he could make out two figures more or less distinct, a man he thought and a woman, but both so dark that it was only when by moments they appeared out of the tree-shadows, with which they were confused, against the lighter color of the gravel that he could make them out. They parted while he looked on; the man disappeared among the trees; the other, he could see her against the faint lightness of the distance, stood looking after the retreating figure; and then turned and came towards the house. Young Hamerton’s heart leaped up in his breast. What did it mean? Did he recognize the pose of the figure, the carriage of the head, the fine movement, so dignified yet so free? He seized hold on himself, so to speak, and put a violent stop to his own thoughts. She! madness! as soon would he suppose that the queen could do wrong. It must be her maid, perhaps some woman who had got the trick of her walk and air through constant association: but she—

Just then, while Hamerton retired somewhat sick at heart, and seated himself near the door of the conservatory to recover, cursing as he did so the sharp, scolding tones of Mr. Trevanion going on with his grievances, Rosalind, standing against the pillar, was startled by something like a step or faint stir outside, and then the sound, which would have been inaudible to faculties less keen and highly strung, of the handle of the glass door. It was turned almost noiselessly and some one came in. Some one. Whom? With a shiver which convulsed her, Rosalind watched: this dark figure might be any one—her mother’s maid, perhaps, even Russell, gone out to pry and spy as was her way. Rosalind had to clutch the pillar fast as she watched from behind while the new-comer took a shawl from her head, and, sighing, arranged with her hands her head-dress and hair. Whatever had happened to her she was not happy. She sighed as she set in order the lace upon her head. Alas! the sight of that lace was enough, the dim light was enough: no one else in the house moved like that. It was the mother, the wife, the mistress of Highcourt, Madam Trevanion, whom all the country looked up to for miles and miles around. Rosalind could not speak. She detached her arms from the pillar and followed like a white ghost as her stepmother moved towards the drawing-room. In the night and dark, in the stormy wind amid all those black trees, where had she been?

CHAPTER III

“I married her without a penny,” Mr. Trevanion was saying. “I was a fool for my pains. If you think you will purchase attention and submission in that way you are making a confounded mistake. Set a beggar on horseback, that’s how it ends. A duke’s daughter couldn’t stand more by her own way; no, nor look more like a lady,” he added with a sort of pride in his property; “that must be allowed her. I married her without a penny; and this is how she serves me. If she had brought a duchy in her apron, or the best blood in England, like Rosalind’s mother, my first poor wife, whom I regret every day of my life— O-h-h!—so you have condescended, Madam, to come at last.”

She was a tall woman, with a figure full of dignity and grace. If it was true that nobody knew who she was, it was at least true also, as even her husband allowed, that she might have been a princess so far as her bearing and manners went. She was dressed in soft black satin which did not rustle or assert itself, but hung in long sweeping folds, here and there broken in outline by feathery touches of lace. Her dark hair was still perfect in color and texture. Indeed, she was still under forty, and the prime of her beauty scarcely impaired. There was a little fitful color on her cheek, though she was usually pale, and her eyes had a kind of feverish, suspicious brightness like sentinels on the watch for danger signals. Yet she came in without hurry, with a smile from one to another of the group of gentlemen, none of whom showed, whatever they may have felt, any emotion. John Trevanion, still blank and quiet against the firelight; the doctor, though he lifted his eyes momentarily, still dropping through his hands, back and forwards, the sliding, smooth surfaces of the cards. From the dimness in the background Hamerton’s young face shone out with a sort of Medusa look of horror and pain, but he was so far out of the group that he attracted no notice. Mrs. Trevanion made no immediate reply to her husband. She advanced into the room, Rosalind following her like a shadow. “I am sorry,” she said calmly, “to be late: have you not begun your rubber? I knew there were enough without me.”

“There’s never enough without you,” her husband answered roughly; “you know that as well as I do. If there were twice enough, what has that to do with it? You know my play, which is just the one thing you do know. If a man can’t have his wife to make up his game, what is the use of a wife at all? And this is not the first time, Madam; by Jove, not the first time by a dozen. Can’t you take another time for your nap, or your nursery, or whatever it is? I don’t believe a word of the nursery. It is something you don’t choose to have known, it is some of your low—”

“Rosalind, your father has no footstool,” said Mrs. Trevanion. She maintained her calm unmoved. “There are some fresh cards, doctor, in the little cabinet.”

“And how the devil,” cried the invalid, in his sharp tones, “can I have my footstool, or clean cards, or anything I want when you are away—systematically away? I believe you do it on purpose to set up a right—to put me out in every way, that goes without saying, that everybody knows, is the object of your life.”

Still she did not utter a word of apology, but stooped and found the footstool, which she placed at her husband’s feet. “This is the one that suits you best,” she said. “Come, John, if I am the culprit, let us lose no more time.”

Mr. Trevanion kicked the footstool away. “D’ye think I am going to be smoothed down so easily?” he cried. “Oh, yes, as soon as Madam pleases, that is the time for everything. I shall not play. You can amuse yourselves if you please, gentlemen, at Mrs. Trevanion’s leisure, when she can find time to pay a little attention to her guests. Give me those newspapers, Rosalind. Oh, play, play! by all means play! don’t let me interrupt your amusement. A little more neglect, what does that matter? I hope I am used to— Heaven above! they are not cut up. What is that rascal Dorrington about? What is the use of a pack of idle servants? never looked after as they ought to be; encouraged, indeed, to neglect and ill-use the master that feeds them. What can you expect? With a mistress who is shut up half her time, or out of the way or—What’s that? what’s that?”

It was a singular thing enough, and this sudden exclamation called all eyes to it. Mrs. Trevanion, who had risen when her husband kicked his footstool in her face, and, turning round, had taken a few steps across the room, stopped with a slight start, which perhaps betrayed some alarm in her, and looked back. The train of her dress was sweeping over the hearthrug, and there in the full light, twisted into her lace, and clinging to her dress, was a long, straggling, thorny branch, all wet with the damp of night. Involuntarily they were all gazing— John Trevanion looking down gravely at this strange piece of evidence which was close to his feet; the doctor, with the cards in his hand, half risen from his seat stooping across the table to see; while Rosalind, throwing herself down, had already begun to detach it with hands that trembled.

“Oh, mamma!” cried the girl, with a laugh which sounded wild, “how careless, how horrid of Jane! Here is a thorn that caught in your dress the last time you wore it; and she has folded it up in your train, and never noticed. Papa is right, the servants are—”

“Hold your tongue, Rose,” said Mr. Trevanion, with an angry chuckle of satisfaction; “let alone! So, Madam, this is why we have to wait for everything; this is why the place is left to itself; and I—I—the master and owner, neglected. Good heavens above! while the lady of the house wanders in the woods in a November night. With whom, Madam? With whom?” he raised himself like a skeleton, his fiery eyes blazing out of their sockets. “With whom, I ask you? Here, gentlemen, you are witnesses; this is more serious than I thought. I knew my wishes were disregarded, that my convenience was set at naught, that the very comforts that are essential to my life were neglected, but I did not think I was betrayed. With whom, Madam? Answer! I demand his name.”

“Reginald,” said John Trevanion, “for God’s sake don’t let us have another scene. You may think what you please, but we know all that is nonsense. Neglected! Why she makes herself your slave. If the other is as true as that! Doctor, can’t you put a stop to it? He’ll kill himself—and her.”

“Her! oh, she’s strong enough,” cried the invalid. “I have had my suspicions before, but I have never uttered them. Ah, Madam! you thought you were too clever for me. A sick man, unable to stir out of the house, the very person, of course, to be deceived. But the sick man has his defenders. Providence is on his side. You throw dust in the eyes of these men; but I know you; I know what I took you from; I’ve known all along what you were capable of. Who was it? Heaven above! down, down on your knees, and tell me his name.”

Mrs. Trevanion was perfectly calm, too calm, perhaps, for the unconsciousness of innocence; and she was also deadly pale. “So far as the evidence goes,” she said quietly, “I do not deny it. It has not been folded up in my train, my kind Rosalind. I have been out of doors; though the night, as you see, is not tempting; and what then?”

She turned round upon them with a faint smile, and took the branch out of Rosalind’s hand. “You see it is all wet,” she said, “there is no deception in it. I have been out in the park, on the edge of the woods. Look, I did not stop even to change my shoes, they are wet too. And what then?”

“One thing,” cried the doctor, “that you must change them directly, before another word is said. This comes in my department, at least. We don’t want to have you laid up with congestion of the lungs. Miss Rosalind, take your mamma away, and make her, as we say in Scotland, change her feet.”

“Let her go altogether, if she pleases,” said the invalid; “I want to see no more of her. In the park, in the woods—do you hear her, gentlemen? What does a woman want in the woods in a winter night? Let her have congestion of the lungs, it will save disgrace to the family. For, mark my words, I will follow this out. I will trace it to the foundation. Night after night she has done it. Oh, you think I don’t know? She has done it again and again. She has been shameless; she has outraged the very house where— Do you hear, woman? Who is it? My God! a groom, or some low fellow—”

The doctor grasped his arm with a hand that thrilled with indignation as well as professional zeal, while John Trevanion started forward with a sudden flush and menace—

“If you don’t respect your wife, for God’s sake think of the girl—your own child! If it were not for their sakes I should not spend another night under this roof—”

“Spend your night where you please,” said the infuriated husband, struggling against the doctor’s attempt to draw him back into his chair. “If I respect her? No, I don’t respect her. I respect nobody that ill-uses me. Get out of the way, Rosalind! I tell you I’ll turn out that woman. I’ll disgrace her. I’ll show what she’s made of. She’s thrown dust in all your eyes, but never in mine. No, Madam, never in mine; you’ve forgotten, I suppose, what you were when I took you and married you, like a fool—but I’ve never forgotten; and now to break out at your age? Who do you suppose can care for you at your age? It is for what he can get, the villain, that he comes over an old hag like you. Oh, women, women! that’s what women are. Turn out on a winter’s night to philander in the woods with some one, some—”

He stopped, incapable of more, and fell back in his chair, and glared and foamed insults with his bloodless lips which he had not breath to speak.

Mrs. Trevanion stood perfectly still while all this was going on. Her face showed by its sudden contraction when the grosser accusations told, but otherwise she made no movement. She held the long, dangling branch in her hand, and looked at it with a sort of half-smile. It was so small a matter to produce so much—and yet it was not a small matter. Was it the hand of fate! Was it Providence, as he said, that was on his side! But she did not say another word in self-defence. It was evident that it was her habit to stand thus, and let the storm beat. Her calm was the resignation of long usage, the sense that it was beyond remedy, that the only thing she could do was to endure. And yet the accusations of this evening were new, and there was something new in the contemplative way in which she regarded this piece of evidence which had convicted her. Hitherto the worst accusations that had rained upon her had been without evidence, without possibility—and everybody had been aware that it was so. Now there was something new. When she had borne vituperation almost as violent for her neglect, for her indifference, sometimes for her cruelty, the wrong had been too clear for any doubt. But now: never before had there even been anything to explain. But the bramble was a thing that demanded explanation. Even John Trevanion, the just and kind, had shown a gleam of surprise when he caught sight of it. The good doctor, who was entirely on her side, had given her a startled look. Rosalind, her child, had put forth a hesitating plea—a little lie for her. All this went to her heart with a wringing of pain, as if her very heart had been crushed with some sudden pressure. But the habit of endurance was unbroken even by these secret and novel pangs. She did not even meet the eyes directed to her with any attempt at self-defence. But yet the position was novel; and standing still in her old panoply of patience, she felt it to be so, and that former expedients were inadequate to the occasion. For the first time it would have better become her to speak. But what? She had nothing to say.

The scene ended as such scenes almost invariably ended here—in an attack of those spasms which were wearing Mr. Trevanion’s life away. The first symptoms changed in a moment the aspect of his wife. She put down the guilty bramble and betook herself at once to her oft-repeated, well-understood duty. The room was cleared of all the spectators, even Rosalind was sent away. It was an experience with which the house was well acquainted. Mrs. Trevanion’s maid came noiselessly and swift at the sound of a bell, with everything that was needed; and the wife, so angrily vituperated and insulted, became in a moment the devoted nurse, with nothing in her mind save the care of the patient who lay helpless in her hands. The doctor sat by with his finger on the fluttering pulse—while she, now fanning, now bathing his forehead, following every variation and indication of the attack, fulfilled her arduous duties. It did not seem to cross her mind that anything had passed which could slacken her vigilance or make her reluctant to fulfil those all-absorbing duties; neither when the patient began to moan did there seem any consciousness in him that the circumstances were anyhow changed. He began to scold in broken terms almost before he had recovered consciousness, demanding to know why he was there, what they were doing to him, what was the occasion of the appliances they had been using. “I’m all right,” he stammered, before he could speak, pushing away the fan she was using. “You want to kill me. Don’t let her kill me, doctor; take that confounded thing away. I’m—I’m—all right; I—I want to get to bed. You are keeping me out of bed, on purpose—to kill me!” he cried with a new outburst. “That is all right; he’ll do now,” said the doctor, cheerfully. “Wait a moment, and we’ll get you to bed—” The peaceful room had changed in the most curious way while all these rapid changes had gone on. The very home of tranquillity at first, then a stage of dramatic incident and passion, now a scene in which feeble life was struggling with the grip of death at its throat. Presently all this commotion and movement was over, and the palpitations of human existence swept away, leaving, indeed, a little disorder in the surroundings; a cushion thrown about, a corner of the carpet turned up, a tray with water-bottles and essences on the table: but nothing more to mark the struggle, the conflicts which had been, the suffering and misery. Yes; one thing more: the long trail of bramble on another table, which was the most fatal symbol of all.

When everything was quiet young Hamerton, with a pale face, came out of the conservatory. He had again retreated there when Mrs. Trevanion came in, and the husband had begun to rage. It pained him to be a party to it; to listen to all the abuse poured upon her was intolerable. But what was more intolerable still was to remember what he had seen. That woman, standing so pale and calm, replying nothing, bearing every insult with a nobleness which would have become a saint. But, oh heavens! was it her he had seen—her—under shelter of the night? The young man was generous and innocent, and his heart was sick with this miserable knowledge. He was in her secret. God help her! Surely she had excuse enough; but what is to become of life or womanhood when such a woman requires an excuse at all?

CHAPTER IV

The hall was dimly lighted, the fire dying out in the great fireplace, everything shadowy, cold, without cheer or comfort. Mr. Trevanion had been conveyed to his room between the doctor and his valet, his wife following, as usual, in the same order and fashion as was habitual, without any appearance of change. Rosalind, who was buried in a great chair, nothing visible but the whiteness of her dress in the imperfect light, and John Trevanion, who stood before the fire there as he had done in the drawing-room, with his head a little bent, and an air of great seriousness and concern, watched the little procession without a word as it went across the hall. These attacks were too habitual to cause much alarm; and the outburst of passion which preceded was, unfortunately, common enough also. The house was not a happy house in which this volcano was ready to burst forth at any moment, and the usual family subterfuges to conceal the family skeleton had become of late years quite impossible, as increasing weakness and self-indulgence had removed all restraints of self-control from the master of the house. They were all prepared for the outbreak at any moment, no matter who was present. But yet there were things involved which conveyed a special sting to-night. When the little train had passed, the two spectators in the hall remained for some time quite silent, with a heaviness and oppression upon them which, perhaps, the depressing circumstances around, the want of light and warmth and brightness, increased. They did not, as on ordinary occasions, return to the drawing-room. For some time they said nothing to each other. By intervals a servant flitted across the hall, from one room to another, or the opening of a door roused these watchers for a moment; but presently everything fell back into stillness and the chill of the gathering night.

“Rosalind, I think you should go to bed—”

“Oh, Uncle John, how can I go to bed? How can any one in this house rest or sleep?”

“My dear, I admit that the circumstances are not very cheerful. Still, you are more or less accustomed to them; and we shall sleep all the same, no doubt, just as we should sleep if we were all to be executed to-morrow.”

“Should we? but not if some one else, some one we loved—was to be—executed, as you say.”

“Perhaps that makes a little difference: while the condemned man sleeps, I suppose his mother or his sister, poor wretches, are wakeful enough. But there is nothing of that kind in our way, my little Rose. Come! it is no worse than usual: go to bed.”

“It is worse than usual. There has never before—oh!” the girl cried, clasping her hands together with a vehement gesture. Her misery was too much for her: and then another sentiment came in and closed her mouth. Uncle John was very tender and kind, but was he not on the other side?

“My dear,” he said gently, “I think it will be best not to discuss the question. If there is something new in it, it will develop soon enough. God forbid! I am little disposed, Rosalind, to think that there is anything new.”

She did not make any reply. Her heart was sore with doubt and suspicion; the more strange these sentiments, all the more do they scorch and sting. In the whirl which they introduced into her mind she had been trying in vain to get any ground to stand upon. There might have been explanations; but then how easy to give them, and settle the question. It is terrible, in youth, to be thrown into such a conflict of mind, and all the more to one who has never been used to think out anything alone, who has shared with another every thought that arose in her, and received on everything the interchanged ideas of a mind more experienced, wiser, than her own. She was thus suddenly cut off from her anchors, and felt herself drifting on wild currents unknown to her, giddy, as if buffeted by wind and tide—though seated there within the steadfast walls of an old house which had gone through all extremities of human emotion, and never quivered, through hundreds of troublous years.

“I think,” said John Trevanion, after a pause, “that it would be good for you to have a little change. Home, of course, is the best place for a girl. Still, it is a great strain upon young nerves. I wonder we none of us have ever thought of it before. Your aunt Sophy would be glad to have you, and I could take you there on my way. I really think, Rosalind, this would be the best thing you could do. Winter is closing in, and in present circumstances it is almost impossible to have visitors at Highcourt. Even young Hamerton, how much he is in the way; though he is next to nobody, a young fellow! Come! you must not stay here to wear your nerves to fiddlestrings. I must take you away.”

She looked up at him with an earnest glance which he was very conscious of, but did not choose to meet. “Why at this moment above all others?” she said.