Madam

But there were other means of setting the wheels of fate in motion, with which Madame Trevanion had nothing to do.

CHAPTER XL

Towards the 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 the tables d’hôte and 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 different bads there, 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 of the 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 the rôle which 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 of the 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 their tribute 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! for her of 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 about poetry, 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.

CHAPTER XLI

Johnny’s little 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 capricious little 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 revulsion of 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 was reflected 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 the children, 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, I could 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.