Madam

“I thought it safest to bring them round to this bit of beach, where they could be landed without any difficulty. Oh, pray don’t say anything about it. It was little more than wading, the water is not deep. And I am amply—Miss Trevanion? I am shocked to see you carrying my coat!”

Rosalind turned to the dripping figure by her side with a cry of astonishment. She had been far too much agitated even to make any question in her mind who it was. Now she raised her eyes to meet—what? the eyes that were like Johnny’s, the dark, wistful, appealing look which had come back to her mind so often. He stood there with the water running from him, in the glow of exertion, his face thinner and less boyish, but his look the same as when he had come to her help on the country road, and by the little lake at Highcourt. It flashed through Rosalind’s mind that he had always come to her help. She uttered the “Oh!” which is English for every sudden wonder, not knowing what to say.

“I hope,” he said, “that you may perhaps remember I once saw you at Highcourt in the old days, in a little difficulty with a boat. This was scarcely more than that.”

“I recollect,” she said, her breath coming fast; “you were very kind—and now— Oh, this is a great deal more; I owe you—their lives.”

“Pray don’t say so. It was nothing—any one would have done it, even if there had been a great deal more to do, but there was nothing; it was little more than wading.” Then he took his coat from her hand, which she had been holding all the time. “It is far more—it is too much that you should have carried my coat, Miss Trevanion. It is more than a reward.”

She had thought of the face so often, the eyes fixed upon her, and had forgotten what doubts had visited her mind when she saw him before. Now, when she met the gaze of those eyes again, all her doubts came back. There was a faint internal struggle, even while she remembered that he had saved the lives of the children. “I know,” she said, recollecting herself, “that we have met before, and that I had other things to thank you for, though nothing like this. But you must forgive me, for I don’t know your name.”

“My name is Everard,” he said, with a little hesitation and a quick flush of color. His face, which had always been refined in feature, had a delicacy that looked like ill-health, and as he pulled on his coat over his wet clothes he shivered slightly. Was it because he felt the chill, or only to call forth the sudden anxiety which appeared in Rosalind’s face? “Oh,” he said, “it was momentary. I shall take no harm.”

“What can we do?” cried Rosalind, with alarm. “If it should make you ill! And you are here perhaps for the baths? and yet have plunged in without thought. What can we do? There is no carriage nor anything to be got. Oh, Mr. Everard! take pity upon me and hasten home.”

“I will walk with you if you will let me.”

“But we cannot go quick, the children are not able; and what if you catch cold! My aunt would never forgive me if I let you wait.”

“There could be nothing improper,” he said hastily, “with the nurse and the children.”

Rosalind felt the pain of this mistaken speech prick her like a pin-point. To think in your innermost consciousness that a man is “not a gentleman” is worse than anything else that can be said of him in English speech. She hesitated and was angry with herself, but yet her color rose high. “What I mean,” she said, with an indescribable, delicate pride, “is that you will take cold—you understand me, surely—you will take cold after being in the water. I beg you to go on without waiting, for the children cannot walk quickly.”

“And you?” he said; still he did not seem to understand, but looked at her with a sort of delighted persuasion that she was avoiding the walk with him coyly, with that feminine withdrawal which leads a suitor on. “You are just as wet as I am. Could not we two push on and leave the children to follow?”

Rosalind gave him a look which was full of almost despairing wonder. The mind and the words conveyed so different an impression from that made by the refined features and harmonious face. “Oh, please go away,” she said, “I am in misery to see you standing there so wet. My aunt will send to you to thank you. Oh, please go away! If you catch cold we will never forgive ourselves,” Rosalind cried, with an earnestness that brought tears to her eyes.

“Miss Trevanion, that you should care—”

Rosalind, in her heat and eagerness, made an imperious gesture, stamping her foot on the sand in passionate impatience. “Go, go!” she cried. “We owe you the children’s lives, and we shall not forget it—but go!”

He hesitated. He did not believe nor understand her! He looked in her eyes wistfully, yet with a sort of smile, to know how much of it was true. Could any one who was a gentleman have so failed to apprehend her meaning? Yet it did gleam on him at length, and he obeyed her, though reluctantly, turning back half a dozen times in the first hundred yards to see if she were coming. At last a turn in the road hid him from her troubled eyes.

CHAPTER XLII

When the party arrived at the hotel and Aunt Sophy was informed of what had happened, her excitement was great. The children were caressed and scolded in a breath. After a while, however, the enormity of their behavior was dwelt upon by all their guardians together.

“I was saying, ma’am, that I couldn’t never take Miss Amy and Master Johnny near to that lake again. Oh, I couldn’t! The hotel garden, I couldn’t go farther, not with any peace of mind.”

“You hear what nurse says, children,” said Aunt Sophy; “she is quite right. It would be impossible for me to allow you to go out again unless you made me a promise, oh, a faithful promise.”

Amy was tired with the long walk after all the excitement; and she was always an impressionable little thing. She began to cry and protest that she never meant any harm, that the boat was so pretty, and that she was sure it was fastened and could not get away. But Johnny held his ground. “I could have doned it myself,” he said; “I know how to row. Nobody wasn’t wanted—if that fellow had let us alone.”

“Where is the gentleman, Rosalind?” cried Mrs. Lennox. “Oh, how could you be so ungrateful as to let him go without asking where he was to be found? To think he should have saved those precious children and not to know where to find him to thank him! Oh, children, only think, if you had been brought home all cold and stiff, and laid out there never to give any more trouble, never to go home again, never to speak to your poor, distracted auntie, or to poor Rosalind, or to— Oh, my darlings! What should I have done if you had been brought home to me like that? It would have killed me. I should never more have held up my head again.”

At this terrible prospect, and at the sight of Aunt Sophy’s tears, Amy flung her arms as far as they would go round that portly figure, and hid her sobs upon her aunt’s bosom. Johnny began to yield; he grew pale, and his big eyes veiled themselves with a film of tears. To think of lying there cold and stiff, as Aunt Sophy said, daunted the little hero. “I could have doned it,” he said, but faltered, and his mouth began to quiver.

“And Uncle John,” cried Mrs. Lennox, “and Rex! what would you have said never, never to see them again?”

Johnny, in his own mind, piled up the agony still higher—and the rabbits, and the pigeons, and his own pet guinea-pig, and his pony! He flung himself into Aunt Sophy’s lap, which was so large, and so soft, and so secure.

This scene moved Rosalind both to tears and laughter; for it was a little pathetic as well as funny, and the girl was overstrained. She would have liked to fling herself, too, into arms of love like Aunt Sophy’s, which were full—arms as loving, but more strong. The children did not want their mother, but Rosalind did. Her mind was moved by sentiments more complex than Johnny’s emotions, but she had no one to have recourse to. The afternoon brightness had faded, and the gray of twilight filled the large room, making everything indistinct. At this crisis the door opened and somebody was ushered into the room, some one who came forward with a hesitating, yet eager, step. “I hope I may be permitted, though I am without introduction, to ask if the children have taken any harm,” he said.

“It is Mr. Everard, Aunt Sophy.” Rosalind retired to the background, her heart beating loudly. She wanted to look on, to see what appearance he presented to a spectator, to know how he would speak, what he would say.

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Lennox, standing up with a child in each arm, “it is the gentleman who saved my darlings—it is your deliverer, children. Oh, sir, what can I say to you; how can I even thank you? You have saved my life too, for I should never have survived if anything had happened to them.”

He stood against the light of one of the windows, unconscious of the eager criticism with which he was being watched. Perhaps the bow he made was a little elaborate, but his voice was soft and refined. “I am very glad if I have been of any service,” he said.

“Oh, service! it is far, far beyond that. I hope Rosalind said something to you; I hope she told you how precious they were, and that we could never, never forget.”

“There is nothing to thank me for, indeed. It was more a joke than anything else; the little things were in no danger so long as they sat still. I was scarcely out of my depth, not much more than wading all the time.”

“Aunt Sophy, that is what I told you,” said Johnny, withdrawing his head from under her arm. “I could have doned it myself.”

“Oh, hush, Johnny! Whatever way it was done, what does that matter? Here they are, and they might have been at the bottom of the lake. And you risked your own life or your health, which comes to the same thing! Pray sit down, Mr. Everard. If you are here,” Aunt Sophy went on, loosing her arms from the children and sitting down with the full purpose of enjoying a talk, “as I am, for the waters, to get drenched and to walk home in your wet clothes must have been madness—that is, if you are here for your health.”

“I am here for the baths, but a trifle like that could harm no one.”

“Oh, I trust not—oh, I anxiously trust not! It makes my heart stand still even to think of it. Are you getting any benefit? It is for rheumatism, I suppose? And what form does yours take? One sufferer is interested in another,” Mrs. Lennox said.

He seemed to wince a little, and threw a glance behind into the dimness to look for Rosalind. To confess to rheumatism is not interesting. He said at last, with a faint laugh, “I had rheumatic fever some years ago. My heart is supposed to be affected, that is all; the water couldn’t hurt that organ; indeed I think it did good.”

Rosalind, in the background, knew that this was meant for her; but her criticism was disarmed by a touch of humorous sympathy for the poor young fellow, who had expected, no doubt, to appear in the character of a hero, and was thus received as a fellow-sufferer in rheumatism. But Mrs. Lennox naturally saw nothing ludicrous in the situation. “Mine,” she said, “is in the joints. I get so stiff, and really to rise up after I have been sitting down for any time is quite an operation. I suppose you don’t feel anything of that sort? To be sure, you are so much younger—but sufferers have a fellow-feeling. And when did you begin your baths? and how many do you mean to take? and do you think they are doing you any good? It is more than I can say just at present, but they tell me that it often happens so, and that it is afterwards that one feels the good result.”

“I know scarcely any one here,” said the young man, “so I have not been able to compare notes; but I am not ill, only taking the baths to please a—relation, who, perhaps,” he said with a little laugh, “takes more interest in me than I deserve.”

“Oh, I am sure not that!” said Aunt Sophy, with enthusiasm. “But, indeed, it is very nice of you to pay so much attention to your relation’s wishes. You will never repent putting yourself to trouble for her peace of mind, and I am sure I sympathize with her very much in the anxiety she must be feeling. When the heart is affected it is always serious. I hope, Mr. –”

“Everard,” he said with a bow, once more just a little, as the critic behind him felt, too elaborate for the occasion.

“I beg your pardon. Rosalind did tell me; but I was so much agitated, almost too much to pay any attention. I hope, Mr. Everard, that you are careful to keep yourself from all agitation. I can’t think the shock of plunging into the lake could be good for you. Oh, I feel quite sure it couldn’t be good. I hope you will feel no ill results afterwards. But excitement of any sort, or agitation, that is the worst thing for the heart. I hope, for your poor dear relation’s sake, who must be so anxious, poor lady, that you will take every care.”

He gave a glance behind Mrs. Lennox to the shadow which stood between him and the window. “That depends,” he said, “rather on other people than on myself. You may be sure I should prefer to be happy and at ease if it were in my power.”

“Ah, well!” said Aunt Sophy, “that is very true. Of course our happiness depends very much upon other people. And you have done a great deal for mine, Mr. Everard. It would not have done me much good to have people telling me to be cheerful if my poor little darlings had been at the bottom of the lake.” Here Aunt Sophy stopped and cried a little, then went on. “You are not, I think, living at our hotel, but I hope you will stay and dine with us. Oh, yes, I cannot take any refusal. We may have made your acquaintance informally, but few people can have so good a reason for wishing to know you. This is my niece, Miss Trevanion, Mr. Everard; the little children you saved are my brother’s children—the late Mr. Trevanion of Highcourt.”

Rosalind listened with her heart beating high. Was it possible that he would receive the introduction as if he had known nothing of her before? He rose and turned towards her, made once more that slightly stiff, too elaborate bow, and was silent. No, worse than that, began to say something about being happy to make—acquaintance.

“Aunt Sophy,” said Rosalind, stepping forward, “you are under a mistake. Mr. Everard knows us well enough. I met him before we left Highcourt.” And then she, too, paused, feeling with sudden embarrassment that there was a certain difficulty in explaining their meetings, a difficulty of which she had not thought. It was he now who had the advantage which she had felt to lie with herself.

“It is curious how things repeat themselves,” he said. “I had once the pleasure of recovering a boat that had floated away from Miss Trevanion on the pond at Highcourt, but I could not have ventured to claim acquaintance on so small an argument as that.”

Rosalind was silenced—her mind began to grow confused. It was not true that this was all, and yet it was not false. She said nothing; if it were wrong, she made herself an accomplice in the wrong; and Aunt Sophy’s exclamations soon put an end to the incident.

“So you had met before!” she cried. “So you know Highcourt! Oh, what a very small world this is!—everybody says so, but it is only now and then that one is sensible. But you must tell us all about it at dinner. We dine at the table d’hôte, if you don’t mind. It is more amusing, and I don’t like to shut up Rosalind with only an old lady like me for her company. You like it too? Oh, well, that is quite nice. Will you excuse us now, Mr. Everard, while we prepare for dinner? for that is the dressing-bell just ringing, and they allow one so little time. Give me your hand, dear, to help me up. You see I am quite crippled,” Mrs. Lennox said, complacently, forgetting how nimbly she had sprung from her chair with a child under each arm to greet their deliverer. She limped a little as she went out of the room on Rosalind’s arm. She was quite sure that her rheumatism made her limp; but sometimes she forgot that she had rheumatism, which is a thing that will happen in such cases now and then.

The room was still dark. It was not Mrs. Lennox’s custom to have it lighted before dinner, and when the door closed upon the ladies the young man was left alone. His thoughts were full of triumph and satisfaction, not unmingled with praise. He had attained by the chance of a moment what he had set his heart upon, he said to himself; for years he had haunted Highcourt for this end; he had been kept cruelly and unnaturally (he thought) from realizing it. Those who might have helped him, without any harm to themselves, had refused and resisted his desire, and compelled him to relinquish it. And now in a moment he had attained what he had so desired. Introduced under the most flattering circumstances, with every prepossession in his favor, having had it in his power to lay under the deepest obligation the family, the guardians as well as the girl who, he said to himself, was the only girl he had ever loved. Did he love Rosalind? He thought so, as Mrs. Lennox thought she had rheumatism. Both were serious enough—and perhaps this young stranger was not clearly aware how much it was he saw in Rosalind besides herself. He saw in her a great deal that did not meet the outward eye, though he also saw the share of beauty she possessed, magnified by his small acquaintance with women of her kind. He saw her sweet and fair and desirable in every way, as the truest lover might have done. And there were other advantages which such a lover as Roland Hamerton would have scorned to take into consideration, which Rivers—not able at his more serious age to put them entirely out of his mind—yet turned from instinctively as if it were doing her a wrong to remember them, but which this young man realized vividly and reminded himself of with rising exhilaration. With such a wife what might he not do? Blot out everything that was against him, attain everything he had ever dreamed of, secure happiness, advancement, wealth. He moved from window to window of the dim room, waiting for the ladies, in a state of exaltation indescribable. He had been raised at once from earth to heaven. There was not a circumstance that was not in his favor. He was received by them as an intimate, he was to be their escort, to be introduced by them, to form one of their party; and Rosalind! Rosalind! she was the only girl whom he had ever loved.

CHAPTER XLIII

He was placed between the ladies at the table d’hôte. Mrs. Lennox, on her side, told the story of what had happened to the lady on her other side, and Rosalind was appealed to by her left-hand neighbor to know what was the truth of the rumor which had begun to float about the little community. It was reported all down the table, so far, at least, as the English group extended, “That is the gentleman next to Mrs. Lennox—the children were drowning, and he plunged in and saved both.” “What carelessness to let them go so near the water! It is easy to see, poor things, that they have no mother.” “And did he save them both? Of course, they must both be safe or Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion would not have appeared at the table d’hôte.” Such remarks as these, interspersed with questions, “Who is the young fellow?—where has he sprung from? I never saw him before,” buzzed all about as dinner went on. Mr. Everard was presented by Mrs. Lennox, in her gratitude, to the lady next to her, who was rather a great lady, and put up her glass to look at him. He was introduced to the gentleman on Rosalind’s other hand by that gentleman’s request. Thus he made his appearance in society at Aix with greatest éclat. When they rose from the table he followed Rosalind out of doors into the soft autumnal night. The little veranda and the garden walks under the trees were full of people, under cover of whose noisy conversation there was abundant opportunity for a more interesting tête-à-tête. “You are too kind,” he said, “in telling this little story. Indeed, there was nothing to make any commotion about. You could almost have done it, without any help from me.”

“No,” she said. “I could not have done it; I should have tried and perhaps been drowned, too. But it is not I who have talked, it is Aunt Sophy. She is very grateful to you.”

“She has no occasion,” he said. “Whatever I could do for you, Miss Trevanion—” and then he stopped, somewhat breathlessly. “It was curious, was it not? that the boat on the pond should have been so much the same thing, though everything else was so different. And that is years ago.”

“Nearly two years.”

“Then you remember?” he said, in a tone of delighted surprise.

“I have much occasion to remember. It was at a very sad moment. I remember everything that happened.”

“To be sure,” said the young man. “No, I did not forget. It was only that in the pleasure of seeing you everything else went out of my mind. But I have never forgotten, Miss Trevanion, all your anxiety. I saw you, you may remember, the day you were leaving home.”

Rosalind raised her eyes to him with a look of pain. “It is not a happy recollection,” she said.

“Oh, Miss Rosalind. I hope you will forgive me for recalling to you what is so painful.”

“The sight of you recalls it,” she said; “it is not your fault, Mr. Everard, you had relations near Highcourt.”

“Only one, but nobody now—nobody. It was a sort of chance that took me there at all. I was in a little trouble, and then I left suddenly, as it happened, the same day as you did, Miss Trevanion. How well I remember it all! You were carrying the same little boy who was in the boat to-day—was it the same?—and you would not let me help you. I almost think if you had seen it was me you would not have allowed me to help you to-day.”

“If I had seen it was—” Rosalind paused with troubled surprise. Sometimes his fine voice and soft tones lulled her doubts altogether, but, again, a sudden touch brought them all back. He was very quick, however, to observe the changes in her, and changed with them with a curious mixture of sympathy and servility.

“Circumstances have carried me far away since then,” he said; “but I have always longed to know, to hear, something. If I could tell you the questions I have asked myself as to what might be going on; and how many times I have tried to get to England to find out!”

“We have never returned to Highcourt,” she said, confused by his efforts to bring back those former meetings, and not knowing how to reply. “I think we shall not till my brother comes of age. Yes, my little brother was the same. He is very much excited about what happened to-day; neither of them understood it at first, but now they begin to perceive that it is a wonderful adventure. I hope the wetting will do you no harm.”

“Please,” he said in a petulant tone, “if you do not want to vex me, say no more of that. I am not such a weak creature; indeed, there is nothing the matter with me, except in imagination.”

“I think,” said Rosalind, with a little involuntary laugh, “that the baths of Aix are good for the imagination. It grows by what it feeds on; though rheumatism does not seem to be an imaginative sort of malady.”

“You forget,” he cried, almost with resentment; “the danger of it is that it affects the heart, which is not a thing to laugh at.”

“Oh, forgive me!” Rosalind cried. “I should not have spoken so lightly. It was because you were so determined that nothing ailed you. And I hope you are right. The lake was so beautiful to-day. It did not look as if it could do harm.”

“You go there often? I saw you had been painting.”

“Making a very little, very bad, sketch, that was all. Mr. Everard, I think I must go in. My aunt will want me.”

“May I come, too? How kind she is! I feared that being without introduction, knowing nobody— But Mrs. Lennox has been most generous, receiving me without a question—and you, Miss Trevanion.”

“Did you expect me to stop you from saving the children till I had asked who you were?” cried Rosalind, endeavoring to elude the seriousness with which he always returned to the original subject. “It is a pretty manner of introduction to do us the greatest service, the greatest kindness.”

“But it was nothing. I can assure you it was nothing,” he said. He liked to be able to make this protestation. It was a sort of renewing of his claim upon them. To have a right, the very strongest right, to their gratitude, and yet to declare it was nothing—that was very pleasant to the young man. And in a way it was true. He would have done anything that it did not hurt him very much to do for Rosalind, even for her aunt and her little brothers and sisters, but to feel that he was entitled to their thanks and yet waived them was delightful to him. It was a statement over and over again of his right to be with them. He accompanied Rosalind to the room in which Aunt Sophy had established herself, with mingled confidence and timidity, ingratiating himself by every means that was possible, though he did not talk very much. Indeed, he was not great in conversation at any time, and now he was so anxious to please that he was nervous and doubtful what to say.