Madam

“Only Jane.”

“Only Jane,” he said, in a tone of relief, but still with a roughness and sullenness out of keeping with his youthful voice. He added, after a moment, “What does Jane want? I hope there is not going to be any sentimental leave-taking. I want to stay and not to go.”

“That is impossible now. Everything is altered. I am going with you, Edmund.”

“Going with me—good Lord!” There was a moment’s silence; then he resumed in a tone of satire, “What may that be for? Going with me! Do you think I can’t take care of myself? Do you think I want a nurse at my heels?” Then another pause. “I know what you mean. You are going away for a change, and you mean me to turn up easily and be introduced to the family? Not a bad idea at all,” he added, in a patronizing tone.

“Edmund,” she said, “afterwards, when we have time, I will tell you everything. There is no time now; but that has come about which I thought impossible. I am—free to make up to you as much as I can, for the past—”

“Free,” he repeated, with astonishment, “to make up to me?” The pause that followed seemed one of consternation. Then he went on roughly, “I don’t know what you mean by making up to me. I have often heard that women couldn’t reason. You don’t mean that you are flinging over the others now, to make a romance—and balance matters? I don’t know what you mean.”

Madam Trevanion grasped Jane’s arm and leaned upon it with what seemed a sudden collapse of strength, but this was invisible to the other, who probably was unaware of any effect produced by what he said. Her voice came afterwards through the dark with a thrill in it that seemed to move the air, something more penetrating than the wind.

“I have no time to explain,” she said. “I must husband my strength, which has been much tried. I am going with you to London to-night. We have a long walk before we reach the train. On the way, or afterwards, as my strength serves me, I will tell you—all that has happened. What I am doing,” she added, faintly, “is by no will of mine.”

“To London to-night?” he repeated, with astonishment. “I am not going to London to-night.”

“Yes, Edmund, with me. I want you.”

“I have wanted,” he said, “you—or, at least, I have wanted my proper place and the people I belonged to, all my life. If you think that now, when I am a man, I am to be burdened with two women always at my heels— Why can’t you stay and make everything comfortable here? I want my rights, but I don’t want you—more than is reasonable,” he added after a moment, slightly struck by his own ungraciousness. “As for walking to the train, and going to London to-night—you, a fine lady, that have always driven about in your carriage!” He gave a hoarse little laugh at the ridiculous suggestion.

Mrs. Trevanion again clutched Jane’s arm. It was the only outlet for her excitement. She said very low, “I should not have expected better—oh, no; how could he know better, after all! But I must go, there is no choice. Edmund, if anything I can do now can blot out the past—no, not that—but make up for it. You too, you have been very tyrannical to me these months past. Hush! let me speak, it is quite true. If you could have had patience, all might have been so different. Let us not upbraid each other—but if you will let me, all that I can do for you now—all that is possible—”

There was another pause. Jane, standing behind, supported her mistress in her outstretched arms, but this was not apparent, nor any other sign of weakness, except that her voice quivered upon the dark air which was still in the shadow of the copse.

“I have told you,” he said, “again and again, what would please me. We can’t be much devoted to each other, can we, after all! We can’t be a model of what’s affectionate. That was all very well when I was a child, when I thought a present was just as good, or better. But now I know what is what, and that something more is wanted. Why can’t you stay still where you are and send for me? You can say I’m a relation. I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself—what good will that do me? I want to get the advantage of my relations, to know them all, and have my chance. There’s one thing I’ve set my heart upon, and you could help me in that if you liked. But to run away, good Lord! what good would that do? It’s all for effect, I suppose, to make me think you are willing now to do a deal for me. You can do a deal for me if you like, but it will be by staying, not by running away.”

“Jane,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “he does not understand me; how should he? you did not understand me at first. It is not that he means anything. And how can I tell him?—not here, I am not able. After, when we are far away, when I am out of reach, when I have got a little—strength—”

“Madam!” said Jane, “if it is true, if you have to do it, if we must go to-night, don’t stand and waste all the little strength you have got standing here.”

He listened to this conversation with impatience, yet with a growing sense that something lay beneath which would confound his hopes. He was not sympathetic with her trouble. How could he have been so? Had not her ways been contrary to his all his life? But a vague dread crept over him. He had thought himself near the object of his hopes, and now disappointment seemed to overshadow him. He looked angrily, with vexation and gathering dismay, at the dark figures of the two women, one leaning against the other. What did she mean now? How was she going to baffle him this time—she who had been contrary to him all his life?

CHAPTER XXXVII

It was a long walk through the wind and blasts of rain, and the country roads were very dark and wet—not a night for a woman to be out in, much less a lady used to drive everywhere in her carriage, as he had said, and less still for one whose strength had been wasted by long confinement in a sick-room, and whose very life was sapped by secret pain. But these things, which made it less possible for Mrs. Trevanion to bear the fatigues to which she was exposed, reacted on the other side, and made her unconscious of the lesser outside evils which were as nothing in comparison with the real misery from which no expedient could set her free. She went along mechanically, conscious of a fatigue and aching which were almost welcome—which lulled a little the other misery which lay somewhere awaiting her, waiting for the first moment of leisure, the time when she should be clear-headed enough to understand and feel it all to the fullest. When they came into the light at the nearest railway station the two women were alone. They got into an empty carriage and placed themselves each in a corner, and, like St. Paul, wished for day; but yet the night was welcome too, giving their proceedings an air of something strange and out of all the habits of their life, which partially, momentarily, confused the every-day aspect of things around, and made this episode in existence all unnatural and unreal. It was morning, the dark, grim morning of winter, without light or color, when Mrs. Trevanion suddenly spoke for the first time. She said, as if thinking aloud, “It was not to be expected. Why should he, when he knows so little of me?” as if reasoning with herself.

“No, Madam,” said Jane.

“If he had been like others, accustomed to these restraints—for no doubt it is a restraint—”

“Oh, yes, Madam.”

“And perhaps with time and use,” she said, sighing and faltering.

“Yes, Madam,” said Jane.

“Why do you say no and yes,” she cried, with sudden vehemence, “as if you had no opinion of your own?”

Then Jane faltered too. “Madam,” she said, “everything is to be hoped from—time, as you say, and use—”

“You don’t think so,” her mistress replied, with a moan, and then all settled into silence again.

It is not supposed that anything save vulgar speed and practical convenience is to be got from the railway; and yet there is nothing that affords a better refuge and shelter from the painful thoughts that attend a great catastrophe in life, and those consultations which an individual in deep trouble holds with himself, than a long, silent journey at the desperate pace of an express train over the long, dark sweeps of the scarcely visible country, with the wind of rapid progress in one’s face. That complete separation from all disturbance, the din that partially deadens in our ears the overwhelming commotion of brain and heart, the protection which is afforded by the roar and sweep of hot haste which holds us as in a sanctuary of darkness, peace, and solitude, is a paradox of every-day life which few think of, yet which is grateful to many. Mrs. Trevanion sank into it with a sensation which was almost ease. She lay back in her corner, as a creature wounded to death lies still after the anguish of medical care is ended, throbbing, indeed, with inevitable pain, yet with all horror of expectation over, and nothing further asked of the sufferer. If not the anguish, at least the consciousness of anguish was deadened by the sense that here no one could demand anything from her, any response, any look, any word. She lay for a long time dumb even in thought, counting the throbs that went through her, feeling the sting and smart of every wound, yet a little eased by the absolute separation between her and everything that could ask a question or suggest a thought. It is not necessary for us in such terrible moments to think over our pangs. The sufferer lies piteously contemplating the misery that holds him, almost glad to be left alone with it. For the most terrible complications of human suffering there is no better image still than that with which the ancients portrayed the anguish of Prometheus on his rock. There he lies, bound and helpless, bearing evermore the rending of the vulture’s beak, sometimes writhing in his bonds, uttering hoarsely the moan of his appeal to earth and heaven, crying out sometimes the horrible cry of an endurance past enduring, anon lying silent, feeling the dew upon him, hearing soft voices of pity, comforters that tell him of peace to come, sometimes softening, sometimes only increasing his misery; but through all unending, never intermitting, the pain—“pain, ever, forever” of that torture from which there is no escape. In all its moments of impatience, in all its succumbings, the calm of anguish which looks like resignation, the struggle with the unbearable which looks like resistance, the image is always true. We lie bound and cannot escape. We listen to what is said about us, the soft consoling of nature, the voices of the comforters. Great heavenly creatures come and sit around us, and talk together of the recovery to come; but meanwhile without a pause the heart quivers and bleeds, the cruel grief tears us without intermission. “Ah me, alas, pain, ever, forever!”

If ever human soul had occasion for such a consciousness it was this woman, cut off in a moment from all she loved best—from her children, from her home, from life itself and honor, and all that makes life dear. Her good name, the last possession which, shipwrecked in every other, the soul in ruin and dismay may still derive some miserable satisfaction from, had to be yielded too. A faint smile came upon her face, the profoundest expression of suffering, when this thought, like another laceration, separated itself from the crowd. A little more or less, was that not a thing to be smiled at? What could it matter? All that could be done to her was done; her spiritual tormentors had no longer the power to give her another sensation; she had exhausted all their tortures. Her good name, and that even in the knowledge of her children! She smiled. Evil had done its worst. She was henceforward superior to any torture, as knowing all that pain could do.

There are some minds to which death is not a thought which is possible, or a way of escape which ever suggests itself. Hamlet, in his musings, in the sickness of his great soul, passes it indeed in review, but rejects it as an unworthy and ineffectual expedient. And it is seldom that a worthy human creature, when not at the outside verge of life, can afford to die. There is always something to do which keeps every such possibility in the background. To this thought after a time Mrs. Trevanion came round. She had a great deal to do; she had still a duty—a responsibility—was it perhaps a possibility, in life? There existed for her still one bond, a bond partially severed for long, apparently dropped out of her existence, yet never forgotten. The brief dialogue which she had held with Jane had betrayed the condition of her thoughts in respect to this one relationship which was left to her, as it betrayed also the judgment of Jane on the subject. Both of these women knew in their hearts that the young man who was now to be the only interest of their lives had little in him which corresponded with any ideal. He had not been kind, he had not been true; he thought of nothing but himself, and yet he was all that now remained to make, to the woman upon whom his folly had brought so many and terrible losses, the possibility of a new life. When she saw the cold glimmer of the dawn, and heard the beginnings of that sound of London, which stretches so far round the centre on every side, Mrs. Trevanion awoke again to the living problem which now was to occupy her wholly. She had been guilty towards him almost all his life, and she had been punished by his means; but perhaps it might be that there was still for her a place of repentance. She had much to do for him, and not a moment to lose. She had the power to make up to him now for all the neglect of the past. Realizing what he was, unlike her in thought, in impulse, in wishes, a being who belonged to her, yet who in heart and soul was none of hers, she rose up from the terrible vigil of this endless night, to make her life henceforward the servant of his, its guardian perhaps, its guide perhaps, but in any case subject to it, as a woman at all times is subject to those for whom she lives. She spoke again, when they were near their arrival, to her maid, as if they had continued the subject throughout the night: “He will be sure to follow us to-morrow night, Jane.”

“I think so, Madam, for he will have nothing else to do.”

“It was natural,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “that he should hesitate to come off in a moment. Why should he, indeed? There was nothing to break the shock to him—as there was to us—”

“To break the shock?” Jane murmured, with a look of astonishment.

“You know what I mean,” her mistress said, with a little impatience. “When things happen like the things that have happened, one does not think very much of a midnight journey. Ah, what a small matter that is! But one who has—nothing to speak of on his mind—”

“He ought to have a great deal on his mind,” said Jane.

“Ought! Yes, I suppose I ought to be half dead, and, on the contrary, I am revived by the night journey. I am able for anything. There is no ought in such matters—it is according to your strength.”

“You have not slept a wink,” said Jane, in an injured voice.

“There are better things than sleep. And he is young, and has not learned yet the lesson that I have had such difficulty in learning.”

“What lesson is that?” said Jane, quickly. “If it is to think of everything and every one’s business, you have been indeed a long time learning, for you have been at it all your life.”

“It takes a long time to learn,” said Madam, with a smile; “the young do not take it in so easily. Come, Jane, we are arriving; we must think now of our new way of living.”

“Madam,” cried Jane, “if there had been an earthquake at Highcourt, and we had both perished in it trying to save the children—”

“Jane! do you think it is wise when you are in great trouble to fix your thoughts upon the greatest happiness in the world? To have perished at Highcourt, you and me, trying—” Her face shone for a moment with a great radiance. “You are a good woman,” she said, shaking her head, with a smile, “but why should there be a miracle to save me? It is a miracle to give me the chance of making up—for what is past.”

“Oh, Madam, I wish I knew what to say to you,” cried Jane; “you will just try your strength and make yourself miserable, and get no return.”

Mrs. Trevanion laughed with a strange solemnity. She looked before her into the vacant air, as if looking in the face of fate. What could make her miserable now? Nothing—the worst that could be done had been done. She said, but to herself, not to Jane, “There is an advantage in it, it cannot be done over again.” Then she began to prepare for the arrival. “We shall have a great deal to do, and we must lose no time. Jane, you will go at once and provide some clothes for us. Whatever happens, we must have clothes, and we must have food, you know. The other things—life can go on without—”

“Madam, for God’s sake, do not smile, it makes my blood run cold.”

“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.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Mrs. Trevanion remained 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 had yielded 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 ignorant of 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.