Madam

And thus other days and other evenings passed. There was something new altogether in Mrs. Trevanion’s face, a sort of awakening, but not to happiness. When they drove out she was very silent, and her eyes were watchful as though looking for something. They went far before the carriage, before the rapid horses, with a watchful look. For whom could she be looking? Rosalind ventured one day to put the question. “For whom—could I be looking? I am looking for no one,” Mrs. Trevanion said, with a sudden rush of color to her face; and whereas she had been leaning forward in the carriage, she suddenly leaned back and took no more notice, scarcely speaking again till they returned home. Such caprice was not like Madam. She did everything as usual, fulfilled all her duties, paid her calls, and was quite as lively and interested as usual in the neighbors whom she visited, entering into their talk almost more than was her habit. But when she returned to the society of her own family she was not as usual. Sometimes there was a pathetic tone in her voice, and she would excuse herself in a way which brought the tears to Rosalind’s eyes.

“My dear,” she would say, “I fear I am bad company at present. I have a great deal to think of.”

“You are always the best of company,” Rosalind would say in the enthusiasm of her affection, and Mrs. Trevanion looked at her with a tender gratitude which broke the girl’s heart.

“When I want people to hear the best that can be said of me, I will send them to you, Rosalind,” she said. “Oh, what a blessing of God that you should be the one to think most well of me! God send it may always be so!” she added, with a voice full of feeling so deep and anxious that the girl did not know what to think.

“How can you speak so, mamma? Think well! Why, you are my mother; there is nobody but you,” she said.

“Do you know, Rosalind,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “that the children who are my very own will not take me for granted like you.”

“And am not I your very own? Whom have I but you?” Rosalind said.

Mrs. Trevanion turned and kissed her, though it was in the public road. Rosalind felt that her cheek was wet. What was the meaning of it? They had always been mother and daughter in the fullest sense of the word, unconsciously, without any remark, the one claiming nothing, the other not saying a word of her devotion. It was already a painful novelty that it should be mentioned between them how much they loved each other, for natural love like this has no need of words.

And then sometimes Madam would be severe.

“Mamma,” said little Sophy on one of these drives, “there is somebody new living in the village—a gentleman—well, perhaps not a gentleman. Russell says nobody knows who he is. And he gets up in the middle of the day, and goes out at night.”

“I should not think it could be any concern of yours who was living in the village,” Mrs. Trevanion said, far more hastily and hotly than her wont.

“Oh, but mamma, it is so seldom any one comes; and he lives at the Red Lion; and it is too late for sketching, so he can’t be an artist; and, mamma, Russell says—”

“I will not have Russell fill your head with the gossip of the village,” said Madam, with a flush of anger. “You are too much disposed to talk about your neighbors. Tell Russell I desire you to have nothing to do with the village news—”

“Oh, but mamma, it isn’t village news, it’s a stranger. Everybody wants to find out about a stranger; and he is so—”

Mrs. Trevanion gave a slight stamp of impatience and anger. “You have still less to do with strangers. Let me hear no more about this,” she said. She did not recover from the thrill of irritation during the whole course of the drive. Sophy, who was unused to such vehemence, retired into sulkiness and tears, while Rosalind, wounded a little to see that her mother was fallible, looked on, surprised. She who was never put out! And then again Madam Trevanion came down from her eminence and made a sort of excuse which troubled her young adorer almost more than the fact. “I am afraid I am growing irritable. I have so much to think of,” she said.

What was it she had to think of now above other times? Mr. Trevanion, for him, was well. They had people staying in the house who amused him; and John Trevanion was coming, Uncle John, whom everybody liked. And the children were all well; and nothing wrong, so far as any one was aware, in the business matters which Mrs. Trevanion bore the weight of to serve her husband; the farms were all let, there was nothing out of gear anywhere. What had she to think of? Rosalind was greatly, painfully puzzled by this repeated statement. And by degrees her perplexity grew. It got into the air, and seemed to infect all the members of the household. The servants acquired a watchful air. The footman who came in to take away the teacups looked terribly conscious that Madam was late. There was a general watchfulness about. You could not cross the hall, or go up-stairs, or go through a corridor from one part of the house to another, without meeting a servant who would murmur an apology, as if his or her appearance was an accident, but who were all far too wide awake and on the alert to have come there accidentally. Anxiety of this kind, or even curiosity, is cumulative, and communicates itself imperceptibly with greater and greater force as it goes on. And in the midst of the general drama a curious side-scene was going on always between the two great antagonists in the household—Russell and Jane. They kept up a watch, each on her side. The one could not open her door or appear upon the upper stairs without a corresponding click of the door of the other; a stealthy inspection behind a pillar, or out of a corner, to see what was going on; and both of them had expeditions of their own which would not bear explanation, both in the house and without. In this point Jane had a great advantage over her adversary. She could go out almost when she pleased, while Russell was restrained by the children, whom she could not leave. But Russell had other privileges that made up for this. She had nursery-maids under her orders; she had spies about in all sorts of places; her relations lived in the village. Every piece of news, every guess and suspicion, was brought to her. And she had a great faculty for joining her bits of information together. By and by Russell began to wear a triumphant look, and Jane a jaded and worn one; they betrayed in their faces the fact that whatever their secret struggle was, one was getting the better of the other. Jane gave Rosalind pathetic looks, as if asking whether she might confide in her, while Russell uttered hints and innuendoes, ending, indeed, as has been seen, in intimations more positive. When she spoke so to Rosalind it may be supposed that she was not silent to the rest of the house; or that she failed, with the boldness of her kind, to set forth and explain the motives of her mistress. For some time before the incident of the bramble, every one in the house had come to be fully aware that Madam went out every evening, however cold, wet, and miserable it might be. John Trevanion acquired the knowledge he could not tell how; he thought it was from that atmosphere of fresh air which unawares she brought with her on those occasions when she was late, when the gentlemen had reached the drawing-room before she came in. This was not always the case. Sometimes they found her there, seated in her usual place, calm enough, save for a searching disquiet in her eyes, which seemed to meet them as they came in, asking what they divined or knew. They all knew—that is to say, all but Mr. Trevanion himself, whose vituperations required no particular occasion, and ran on much the same whatever happened, and the temporary three-days’ guest, who at the special moment referred to was young Hamerton. Sometimes incidents would occur which had no evident bearing upon this curious secret which everybody knew, but yet nevertheless disturbed the brooding air with a possibility of explosion. On one occasion little Sophy was the occasion of a thrill in this electrical atmosphere which nobody quite understood. The child had come in to dessert, and was standing by her father’s side, consuming all the sweetmeats she could get.

“Oh, mamma!” Sophy said suddenly and loudly, addressing her mother across the table; “you know that gentleman at the Red Lion I told you about?”

“What gentleman at the Red Lion?” said her father, who had a keen ear for gossip.

“Do not encourage her, Reginald,” said Madam from the other end of the table; “I cannot let her bring the village stories here.”

“Let us hear about the gentleman from the Red Lion,” he said; “perhaps it is something amusing. I never am allowed to hear what is going on. Come, Sophy, what’s about him? We all want to know.”

“Oh, but mamma will be so cross if I tell you! She will not let me say a word. When I told her before she stamped her foot—”

“Ha, Madam!” said the husband, “we’ve caught you. I thought you were one that never lost your temper. But Sophy knows better. Come, what of this gentleman—”

“I think, Rosalind, we had better go,” said Mrs. Trevanion, rising. “I do not wish the child to bring tales out of the village. Sophy!” The mother looked at her with eyes of command. But the little girl felt herself the heroine of the occasion, and perfectly secure, held in her father’s arm.

“Oh, it is only that nobody knows him!” she said in her shrill little voice; “and he gets up in the middle of the day, and never goes out till night. Russell knows all about him. Russell says he is here for no good. He is like a man in a story-book, with such big eyes. Oh! Russell says she would know him anywhere, and I think so should I—”

Mrs. Trevanion stood listening till all was said. Her face was perfectly without color, her eyes blazing upon the malicious child with a strange passion. What she was doing was the most foolish thing a woman could do. Her anger succeeded by so strange a calm, the intense seriousness with which she regarded what after all was nothing more than a childish disobedience, gave the most exaggerated importance to the incident. Why should she take it so seriously, everybody asked? What was it to her? And who could hinder the people who were looking on, and knew that Madam was herself involved in something unexplainable, something entirely new to all her habits, from receiving this new actor into their minds as somehow connected with it, somehow appropriated by her? When the child stopped, her mother interfered again with the same exaggeration of feeling, her very voice thrilling the tranquillity of the room as she called Sophy to follow her. “Don’t beat her,” Mr. Trevanion called out, with a chuckling laugh. “Sophy, if they whip you, come back to me. Nobody shall whip you for answering your father. Come and tell me all you hear about the gentleman, and never mind what Madam may say.”

Sophy was frightened, however, there could be no doubt, as she followed her mother. She began to cry as she crept through the hall. Mrs. Trevanion held her head high; there was a red spot on each of her cheeks. She paused for a moment and looked at Rosalind, as if she would have spoken; then hurried away, taking no notice of the half-alarmed, half-remorseful child, who stood and gazed after her, at once relieved and disappointed. “Am I to get off?” Sophy whispered, pulling at Rosalind’s dress. And then she burst into a sudden wail of crying: “Oh, Rosalind, mamma has never said good-night!”

“You do not deserve it, after having disobeyed her,” said Rosalind. And with her young mind all confused and miserable, she went to the drawing-room to her favorite seat between the fire and the lamp; but though her novel was very interesting, she did not read it that night.

CHAPTER IX

Next day, as they drove out in the usual afternoon hour while Mr. Trevanion took his nap after luncheon, a little incident happened which was nothing, yet gave Rosalind, who was alone with her stepmother in the carriage, a curious sensation. A little way out of the village, on the side of the road, she suddenly perceived a man standing, apparently waiting till they should pass. Madam had been very silent ever since they left home, so much more silent than it was her habit to be that Rosalind feared she had done something to incur Mrs. Trevanion’s displeasure. Instead of the animated conversations they used to have, and the close consultations that were habitual between them, they sat by each other silent, scarcely exchanging a word in a mile. Rosalind was not herself a great talker, but when she was with this other and better self, she flowed forth in lively observation and remark, which was not talk, but the involuntary natural utterance which came as easily as her breath. This day, however, she had very little to say, and Madam nothing. They leaned back, each in her corner, with a blank between them, which Rosalind now and then tried to break with a wistful question as to whether mamma was cold, whether she did not find the air too keen, if she would like the carriage closed, etc., receiving a smile and a brief reply, but no more. They had fallen into silence almost absolute as they passed through the village, and it was when they emerged once more into the still country road that the incident which has been referred to took place. Some time before they came up to him, Rosalind remarked the man standing under one of the hedgerow trees, close against it, looking towards them, as if waiting for the carriage to pass. Though she was not eager for the tales of the village like Sophy, Rosalind had a country girl’s easily roused curiosity in respect to a stranger. She knew at once by the outline of him, before she could make out even what class he belonged to, that this was some one she had never seen before. As the carriage approached rapidly she grew more and more certain. He was a young man, a gentleman—at least his dress and attitude were like those of a gentleman; he was slim and straight, not like the country louts. As he turned his head towards the carriage, Rosalind thought she had never seen a more remarkable face. He was very pale; his features were large and fine, and his pallor and thinness were made more conspicuous by a pair of very large, dreamy, uncertain dark eyes. These eyes were looking so intently towards the carriage that Rosalind had almost made up her mind that there was to be some demand upon their sympathy, some petition or appeal. She could not help being stirred with all the impetuosity of her nature, frank and warm-hearted and generous, towards this poor gentleman. He looked as if he had been ill, as if he meant to throw himself upon their bounty, as if— The horses sped on with easy speed as she sat up in the carriage and prepared herself for whatever might happen. It is needless to say that nothing happened as far as the bystander was concerned. He looked intently at them, but did no more. Rosalind was so absorbed in a newly awakened interest that she thought of nothing else, till suddenly, turning round to her companion, she met—not her stepmother’s sympathetic countenance, but the blackness of a veil in which Mrs. Trevanion had suddenly enveloped herself. “That must surely be the gentleman Sophy was talking of,” she said. Madam gave a slight shiver in her furs. “It is very cold,” she said; “it has grown much colder since we came out.”

“Shall I tell Robert to close the carriage, mother?”

“Oh, no, it is unnecessary. You can tell him to go home by the Wildwood gate. I should not have come out if I had known it was so cold.”

“I hope you have not taken cold, mamma. To me the air seems quite soft. I suppose,” Rosalind said, in that occasional obtuseness which belongs to innocence, “you did not notice, as you put down your veil just then, that gentleman on the road? I think he must be the gentleman Sophy talked about—very pale, with large eyes. I think he must have been ill. I feel quite interested in him too.”

“No, I did not observe—”

“I wish you had noticed him, mamma. I should know him again anywhere; it is quite a remarkable face. What can he want in the village? I think you should make the doctor call, or send papa’s card. If he should be ill—”

“Rosalind, you know how much I dislike village gossip. A stranger in the inn can be nothing to us. There is Dr. Smith if he wants anything,” said Madam, hurriedly, almost under her breath. And she shivered again, and drew her furred mantle more closely round her. Though it was November, the air was soft and scarcely cold at all, Rosalind thought in her young hardiness; but then Mrs. Trevanion, shut up so much in an overheated room, naturally was more sensitive to cold.

This was in the afternoon; and on the same evening there occurred the incident of the bramble, and all the misery that followed, concluding in Mr. Trevanion’s attack, and the sudden gloom and terror thrown upon the house. Rosalind had no recollection of so trifling a matter in the excitement and trouble that followed. She saw her stepmother again only in the gray of the winter morning, when waking suddenly, with that sense of some one watching her which penetrates the profoundest sleep, she found Mrs. Trevanion seated by her bedside, extremely pale, with dark lines under her eyes, and the air of exhaustion which is given by a sleepless night.

“I came to tell you, dear, that your father, at last, is getting a little sleep,” she said.

“Oh, mamma— But you have had no sleep—you have been up all night!”

“That does not much matter. I came to say also, Rosalind, that I fear my being so late last night and his impatience had a great deal to do with bringing on the attack. It might be almost considered my fault.”

“Oh, mamma! we all know,” cried Rosalind, inexpressibly touched by the air with which she spoke, “how much you have had to bear.”

“No more than what was my duty. A woman when she marries accepts all the results. She may not know what there will be to bear, but whatever it is it is all involved in the engagement. She has no right to shrink—”

There was a gravity, almost solemnity, in Madam’s voice and look which awed the girl. She seemed to be making a sort of formal and serious explanation. Rosalind had seen her give way under her husband’s cruelty and exactions. She had seen her throw herself upon the bed and weep, though there had never been a complaint in words to blame the father to the child. This was one point in which, and in which alone, the fact that Rosalind was his daughter, and not hers, had been apparent. Now there was no accusation, but something like a statement, formal and solemn, which was explained by the exhaustion and calm as of despair that was in her face.

“That has been my feeling all through,” she said. “I wish you to understand it, Rosalind. If Reginald were at home—well, he is a boy, and I could not explain to him as I can to you. I want you to understand me; I have had more to bear, a great deal more, than I expected. But I have always said to myself it was in the day’s work. You may perhaps be tempted to think, looking back, that I have had, even though he has been so dependent upon me, an irritating influence. Sometimes I have myself thought so, and that some one else— But if you will put one thing to another,” she added, going on in the passionless, melancholy argument, “you will perceive that the advantage to him of my knowledge of all his ways counter-balances any harm that might arise from that; and then there is always the doubt whether any one else would not have been equally irritating after a time.”

“Mother,” cried Rosalind, who had raised herself in her bed and was gazing anxiously into the pale and worn-out face which was turned half away from her, not looking at her; “mother! why do you say all this to me? Do I want you to explain yourself, I who know that you have been the best, the kindest—”

Mrs. Trevanion did not look at her, but put up her hand to stop this interruption.

“I am saying this because I think your father is very ill, Rosalind.”

“Worse, mamma?”

“I have myself thought that he was growing much weaker. We flattered ourselves, you know, that to be so long without an attack was a great gain; but I have felt he was growing weaker, and I see now that Dr. Beaton agrees with me. And to have been the means of bringing on this seizure when he was so little able to bear it—”

“Oh, mamma! how can you suppose that any one would ever blame—”

“I am my own judge, Rosalind. No, you would not blame me, not now at least, when you are entirely under my influence. I think, however, that had it not been this it would have been something else. Any trifling matter would have been enough. Nothing that we could have done would have staved it off much longer. That is my conviction. I have worked out the question, oh, a hundred times within myself. Would it be better to go away, and acknowledge that I could not— I was doing as much harm as good—”

Rosalind here seized upon Mrs. Trevanion’s arm, clasping it with her hands, with a cry of “Go away! leave us, mother!” in absolute astonishment and dismay.

“And so withdraw the irritation. But then with the irritation I should have deprived him of a great deal of help. And there was always the certainty that no other could do so much, and that any other would soon become an irritation too. I have argued the whole thing out again and again. And I think I am right, Rosalind. No one else could have been at his disposal night and day like his wife. And if no one but his wife could have annoyed him so much, the one must be taken with the other.”

“You frighten me, mamma; is it so very serious? And you have done nothing—nothing?”

Here Mrs. Trevanion for the first time turned and looked into Rosalind’s face.

“Yes,” she said. There was a faint smile upon her lips, so faint that it deepened rather than lightened the gravity of her look. She shook her head and looked tenderly at Rosalind with this smile. “Ah, my dear,” she said, “you would willingly make the best of it; but I have done something. Not, indeed, what he thinks, what perhaps other people think, but something I ought not to have done.” A deep sigh followed, a long breath drawn from the inmost recesses of her breast to relieve some pain or pressure there. “Something,” she continued, “that I cannot help, that, alas! I don’t want to do; although I think it is my duty, too.”

And then she was silent, sitting absorbed in her own thoughts by Rosalind’s bed. The chilly winter morning had come in fully as she talked till now the room was full of cold daylight, ungenial, unkindly, with no pleasure in it. Rosalind in her eager youth, impatient of trouble, and feeling that something must be done or said to make an end of all misery, that it was not possible there could be no remedy, held her mother’s hand between hers, and cried and kissed it and asked a hundred questions. But Madam sat scarcely moving, her mind absorbed in a labyrinth from which she saw no way of escape. There seemed no remedy either for the ills that were apparent or those which nobody knew.

“You ought at least to be resting,” the girl said at last; “you ought to get a little sleep. I will get up and go to his room and bring you word if he stirs.”

“He will not stir for some time. No, I am not going to bed. After I have bathed my face Jane will get me a cup of tea, and I shall go down again. No, I could not sleep. I am better within call, so that if he wants me— But I could not resist the temptation of coming in to speak to you, Rosalind. I don’t know why—just an impulse. We ought not to do things by impulse, you know, but alas! some of us always do. You will remember, however, if necessary. Somehow,” she said, with a pathetic smile, her lips quivering as she turned to the girl’s eager embrace, “you seem more my own child, Rosalind, more my champion, my defender, than those who are more mine.”

“Nothing can be more yours, mother, all the more that we chose each other. We were not merely compelled to be mother and child.”

“Perhaps there is something in that,” said Mrs. Trevanion.

“And the others are so young; only I of all your children am old enough to understand you,” cried Rosalind, throwing herself into her stepmother’s arms. They held each other for a moment closely in that embrace which is above words, which is the supreme expression of human emotion and sympathy, resorted to when all words fail, and yet which explains nothing, which leaves the one as far as ever from understanding the other, from divining what is behind the veil of individuality which separates husband from wife and mother from child. Then Mrs. Trevanion rose and put Rosalind softly back upon her pillow and covered her up with maternal care as if she had been a child. “I must not have you catch cold,” she said, with a smile which was her usual motherly smile with no deeper meaning in it. “Now go to sleep, my love, for another hour.”