The gentlemen who came into the drawing-room at Highcourt were four in
number: the master of the house, his brother, the doctor, and a young
man fresh from the university, who was a visitor. Mr. Trevanion was an
invalid; he had been a tall man, of what is called aristocratic
appearance; a man with fine, clearly cut features, holding his head
high, with an air “as if all the world belonged to him.” These fine
features were contracted by an expression of fastidious discontent and
dissatisfaction, which is not unusually associated with such universal
proprietorship, and illness had taken the flesh from his bones, and
drawn the ivory skin tightly over the high nose and tall, narrow
forehead. His lips were thin and querulous, his shoulders stooping, his
person as thin and angular as human form could be. When he had warmed
his ghostly hands at the fire, and seated himself in his accustomed
chair, he cast a look round him as if seeking some subject of complaint.
His eyes were blue, very cold, deficient in color, and looked out from
amid the puckers of his eyelids with the most unquestionable meaning.
They seemed to demand something to object to, and this want is one which
is always supplied. The search was but momentary, so that he scarcely
seemed to have entered the room before he asked, “Where is your mother?”
in a high-pitched, querulous voice.
Mr. John Trevanion had followed his brother to the fire, and stood now
with his back to the blaze looking at Rosalind. His name was not in
reality John, but something much more ornamental and refined; but
society had availed itself of its well-known propensity in a more
judicious manner than usual, and rechristened him with the short and
manly monosyllable which suited his character. He was a man who had been
a great deal about the world, and had discovered of how little
importance was a Trevanion of Highcourt, and yet how it simplified life
to possess a well-known name. One of these discoveries without the other
is not improving to the character, but taken together the result is
mellowing and happy. He was very tolerant, very considerate, a man who
judged no one, yet formed very shrewd opinions of his own, upon which he
was apt to act, even while putting forth every excuse and acknowledging
every extenuating circumstance. He looked at Rosalind with a certain
veiled anxiety in his eyes, attending her answer with solicitude; but to
all appearance he was only spreading himself out as an Englishman loves
to do before the clear glowing fire. Dr. Beaton had gone as far away as
possible from that brilliant centre. He was stout, and disapproved, he
said, “on principle,” of the habit of gathering round the fireside. “Let
the room be properly warmed,” he was in the habit of saying, “but don’t
let us bask in the heat like the dogues,” for the doctor was Scotch, and
betrayed now and then in a pronunciation, and always in accent, his
northern origin. He had seated himself on the other side of the
card-table, ready for the invariable game. Young Roland Hamerton, the
Christchurch man, immediately gravitated towards Rosalind, who, to tell
the truth, could not have given less attention to him had he been one of
the above-mentioned “dogues.”
“Where is your mother?” Mr. Trevanion said, looking round for matter of
offence.
“Oh!” said Rosalind, with a quick drawing of her breath; “mamma has gone
for a moment to the nursery--I suppose.” She drew breath again before
the last two words, thus separating them from what had gone before--a
little artifice which Uncle John perceived, but no one else.
“Now this is a strange thing,” said Mr. Trevanion, “that in my own
house, and in my failing state of health, I cannot secure my own wife’s
attention at the one moment in the day when she is indispensable to me.
The nursery! What is there to do in the nursery? Is not Russell there?
If the woman is not fit to be trusted, let her be discharged at once and
some one else got.”
“Oh! it is not that there is any doubt about Russell, papa, only one
likes to see for one’s self.”
“Then why can’t she send you to see for yourself. This is treatment I am
not accustomed to. Oh, what do I say? Not accustomed to it! Of course I
am accustomed to be neglected by everybody. A brat of a child that never
ailed anything in its life is to be watched over, while I, a dying man,
must take my chance. I have put up with it for years, always hoping that
at last-- But the worm will turn, you know; the most patient will break
down. If I am to wait night after night for the one amusement, the one
little pleasure, such as it is-- Night after night! I appeal to you,
doctor, whether Mrs. Trevanion has been ready once in the last
fortnight. The only thing that I ask of her--the sole paltry little
complaisance--”
He spoke very quickly, allowing no possibility of interruption, till his
voice, if we may use such a word, overran itself and died away for want
of breath.
“My dear sir,” said the doctor, taking up the cards, “we are just enough
for our rubber; and, as I have often remarked, though I bow to the
superiority of the ladies in most things, whist, in my opinion, is
altogether a masculine game. Will you cut for the deal?”
But by this time Mr. Trevanion had recovered his breath. “It is what I
will not put up with,” he said; “everybody in this house relies upon my
good-nature. I am always the _souffre-douleur_. When a man is too easy
he is taken advantage of on all hands. Where is your mother? Oh, I mean
your stepmother, Rosalind; her blood is not in your veins, thank Heaven!
You are a good child; I have no reason to find fault with you. Where is
she? The nursery? I don’t believe anything about the nursery. She is
with some of her low friends; yes, she has low friends. Hold your
tongue, John; am I or am I not the person that knows best about my own
wife? Where is your mistress? Where is Madam? Don’t stand there looking
like a stuck pig, but speak!”
This was addressed to an unlucky footman who had come in prowling on one
of the anonymous errands of domestic service--to see if the fire wanted
looking to--if there were any coffee-cups unremoved--perhaps on a
mission of curiosity, too. Mr. Trevanion was the terror of the house.
The man turned pale and lost his self-command. “I--I don’t know, sir.
I--I think, sir, as Madam--I--I’ll send Mr. Dorrington, sir,” the
unfortunate said.
John Trevanion gave his niece an imperative look, saying low, “Go and
tell her.” Rosalind rose trembling and put down her work. The footman
had fled, and young Hamerton, hurrying to open the door to her (which
was never shut) got in her way and brought upon himself a glance of
wrath which made him tremble. He retreated with a chill running through
him, wondering if the Trevanion temper was in her too, while the master
of the house resumed. However well understood such explosions of family
disturbance may be, they are always embarrassing and uncomfortable to
visitors, and young Hamerton was not used to them and did not know what
to make of himself. He withdrew to the darker end of the room, where it
opened into a very dimly lighted conservatory, while the doctor shuffled
the cards, letting them drop audibly through his fingers, and now and
then attempting to divert the flood of rising rage by a remark. “Bless
me,” he said, “I wish I had been dealing in earnest; what a bonnie thing
for a trump card!” and, “A little farther from the fire, Mr. Trevanion,
you are getting overheated; come, sir, the young fellow will take a hand
to begin with, and after the first round another player can cut in.”
These running interruptions, however, were of little service; Mr.
Trevanion’s admirable good-nature which was always imposed upon; his
long-suffering which everybody knew; the advantage the household
took of him; the special sins of his wife for whom he had done
everything--“Everything!” he cried; “I took her without a penny or a
friend, and this is how she repays me”--afforded endless scope. It was
nothing to him in his passion that he disclosed what had been the
secrets of his life; and, indeed, by this time, after the perpetual
self-revelation of these fits of passion there were few secrets left to
keep. His ivory countenance reddened, his thin hands gesticulated, he
leaned forward in his chair, drawing up the sharp angles of his knees,
as he harangued about himself and his virtues and wrongs. His brother
stood and listened, gazing blankly before him as if he heard nothing.
The doctor sat behind, dropping the cards from one hand to another with
a little rustling sound, and interposing little sentences of soothing
and gentle remonstrance, while the young man, ashamed to be thus forced
into the confidence of the family, edged step by step farther away into
the conservatory till he got to the end, where was nothing but a
transparent wall of glass between him and the agitations of the stormy
night.
Rosalind stole out into the hall with a beating heart. Her father’s
sharp voice still echoed in her ears, and she had an angry and ashamed
consciousness that the footman who had hurried from the room before her,
and perhaps other servants, excited by the crisis, were watching her and
commenting upon the indecision with which she stood, not knowing what to
do. “Go and tell her.” How easy it was to say so! Oh, if she but knew
where to go, how to find her, how to save her not only from domestic
strife but from the gnawing worm of suspicion and doubt which Rosalind
felt in her own heart! What was she to do? Should she go up-stairs again
and look through all the rooms, though she knew it would be in vain? To
disarm her father’s rage, to smooth over this moment of misery and put
things back on their old footing, the girl would have done anything;
but as the moments passed she became more and more aware that this was
not nearly all that was wanted, that even she herself, loving Mrs.
Trevanion with all her heart, required more. Her judgment cried out for
more. She wanted explanation; a reason for these strange disappearances.
Why should she choose that time of all others when her absence must be
so much remarked; and where, oh, where did she go? Rosalind stood with a
sort of stupefied sense of incapacity in the hall. She would not go
back. She could not pretend to make a search which she knew to be
useless. She could not rush to the door again and watch there, with the
risk of being followed and found at that post, and thus betray her
suspicion that her mother was out of the house. She went and stood by
one of the pillars and leaned against it, clasping her hands upon her
heart and trying to calm herself and to find some expedient. Could she
say that little Jack was ill, that something had happened? in the
confusion of her mind she almost lost the boundary between falsehood and
truth; but then the doctor would be sent to see what was the matter, and
everything would be worse instead of better. She stood thus against the
pillar and did not move, trying to think, in a whirl of painful
imaginations and self-questionings, feeling every moment an hour. Oh, if
she could but take it upon herself, and bear the weight, whatever it
might be; but she was helpless and could do nothing save wait there,
hidden, trembling, full of misery, till something should happen to set
her free.
Young Hamerton in the conservatory naturally had none of these fears. He
thought that old Trevanion was (as indeed everybody knew) an old tyrant,
a selfish, ill-tempered egoist, caring for nothing but his own
indulgences. How he did treat that poor woman, to be sure! a woman far
too good for him whether it was true or not that he had married her
without a penny. He remembered vaguely that he had never heard who Madam
Trevanion was before her marriage. But what of that? He knew what she
was: a woman still full of grace and charm, though she was no longer in
her first youth. And what a life that old curmudgeon, that selfish old
skeleton, with all his fantastical complaints, led her! When a young man
has the sort of chivalrous admiration for an elder woman which Roland
Hamerton felt for the mistress of this house, he becomes sharp to see
the curious subjection, the cruelty of circumstances, the domestic
oppressions which encircle so many. And Madam Trevanion was more badly
off, more deeply tried, than any other woman, far or near. She was full
of spirit and intelligence, and interest in the higher matters of life;
yet she was bound to this fretful master, who would not let her out of
his sight, who cared for nothing better than a society newspaper, and
who demanded absolute devotion, and the submission of all his wife’s
wishes and faculties to his. Poor lady! no wonder if she were glad to
escape now and then for a moment, to get out of hearing of his sharp
voice, which went through your ears like a skewer.
While these thoughts went through young Hamerton’s mind he had gradually
made his way through the conservatory, in which there was but one dim
lamp burning, to the farther part, which projected out some way with a
rounded end into the lawn which immediately surrounded the house. He was
much startled, as he looked cautiously forth, without being aware that
he was looking, to see something moving, like a repetition of the waving
branches and clouds above close to him upon the edge of a path which led
through the park. At first it was but movement and no more,
indistinguishable among the shadows. But he was excited by what he had
been hearing, and his attention was aroused. After a time he could make
out two figures more or less distinct, a man he thought and a woman, but
both so dark that it was only when by moments they appeared out of the
tree-shadows, with which they were confused, against the lighter color
of the gravel that he could make them out. They parted while he looked
on; the man disappeared among the trees; the other, he could see her
against the faint lightness of the distance, stood looking after the
retreating figure; and then turned and came towards the house. Young
Hamerton’s heart leaped up in his breast. What did it mean? Did he
recognize the pose of the figure, the carriage of the head, the fine
movement, so dignified yet so free? He seized hold on himself, so to
speak, and put a violent stop to his own thoughts. She! madness! as soon
would he suppose that the queen could do wrong. It must be her maid,
perhaps some woman who had got the trick of her walk and air through
constant association: but she--
Just then, while Hamerton retired somewhat sick at heart, and seated
himself near the door of the conservatory to recover, cursing as he did
so the sharp, scolding tones of Mr. Trevanion going on with his
grievances, Rosalind, standing against the pillar, was startled by
something like a step or faint stir outside, and then the sound, which
would have been inaudible to faculties less keen and highly strung, of
the handle of the glass door. It was turned almost noiselessly and some
one came in. Some one. Whom? With a shiver which convulsed her, Rosalind
watched: this dark figure might be any one--her mother’s maid, perhaps,
even Russell, gone out to pry and spy as was her way. Rosalind had to
clutch the pillar fast as she watched from behind while the new-comer
took a shawl from her head, and, sighing, arranged with her hands her
head-dress and hair. Whatever had happened to her she was not happy. She
sighed as she set in order the lace upon her head. Alas! the sight of
that lace was enough, the dim light was enough: no one else in the house
moved like that. It was the mother, the wife, the mistress of Highcourt,
Madam Trevanion, whom all the country looked up to for miles and miles
around. Rosalind could not speak. She detached her arms from the pillar
and followed like a white ghost as her stepmother moved towards the
drawing-room. In the night and dark, in the stormy wind amid all those
black trees, where had she been?