Rosalind Trevanion was a girl who had never had a lover--at least, such
was her own conviction. She even resented the fact a little, thinking it
wonderful that when all the girls in novels possessed such interests she
had none. To attain to the mature age of eighteen, in a wealthy and
well-known house where there were many visitors, and where she had all
the advantages that a good position can give, without ever having
received that sign of approbation which is conveyed by a declaration of
love, was very strange in the point of view of fiction. And as she had
few friends of her own age at hand to consult with, and an absorbing
attachment and friendship for an older woman to fill up the void, novels
were her chief informants as to the ordinary events of youthful life. It
is an unfortunate peculiarity of these works that their almost exclusive
devotion to one subject is too likely to confuse the ideas of young
women in this particular. In old-fashioned English fiction, and in the
latest American variety of the art, no girl who respected herself could
be satisfied with less than half a dozen proposals: which is a
circumstance likely to rouse painful questionings in the hearts of our
young contemporaries. Here was a girl not unconscious that she was what
is generally known as “a nice girl,” with everything favorable in her
circumstances; and yet she had not as yet either accepted or refused
anybody! It was curious. Young Hamerton, who had been staying at
Highcourt at the uncomfortable moment already described, was indeed
prone to seek her society, and unfolded himself rashly to her in talk,
with that indescribable fatuity which young men occasionally show in
presence of girls, moved perhaps by the too great readiness of the kind
to laugh at their jokes and accept their lead. Rosalind, protected by
her knowledge of minds more mature, looked upon Hamerton with a kind of
admiring horror, to think how wonderful it was that a man should be a
man, and superior to all women, and have an education such as women of
ambition admired and envied, and yet be such a ----. She did not say
fool, being very courteous, and unused to strong language. She only said
such a ----; and naturally could no more take him into consideration as a
lover than if he had been one of the footmen. It was not beyond her
consciousness either, perhaps, that Charley Blake, the son and partner
of the family lawyer, whom business often brought to Highcourt,
contemplated her often with his bold black eyes in a marked and
unmistakable way. But that was a piece of presumption which Miss
Trevanion thought of as a princess royal might regard the sighs of a
courtier. Rosalind had the eclectic and varying political views held by
young women of intelligence in the present time. She smiled at the old
Toryism about her. She chose her men and her measures from both parties,
and gave her favorites a hot but somewhat fluctuating support. She felt
very sure that of all things in the world she was not an aristocrat,
endeavoring to shut the gates of any exclusive world against success
(which she called genius); therefore it could not be this thoroughly
old-world feeling which prompted her disdain of Charley Blake. She was
of opinion that a poor man of genius struggling upward towards fame was
the sublimest sight on earth, and that to help in such a struggle was a
far finer thing for a woman to do than to marry a duke or a prince. But
no such person had ever come in her way, nor any one else so gifted, so
delightful, so brilliant, and so tender as to merit the name of a lover.
She was a little surprised, but referred the question to statistics, and
said to herself that because of the surplus of women those sort of
things did not happen nowadays: though, indeed, this was a theory
somewhat invalidated by the fact that most of the young ladies in the
county were married or about to be so. The position altogether did not
convey any sense of humiliation to Rosalind. It gave her rather a sense
of superiority, as of one who lifts her head in native worth superior to
the poor appreciation of the crowd. How the sense of being overlooked
should carry with it this sense of superiority is for the philosopher to
say.
These thoughts belonged to the lighter and happier portion of her life,
and were at present subdued by very sombre reflections. When she walked
out in the morning after these events there was, however, a certain
sense of emancipation in her mind. Her father had again been very
ill--so ill that during the whole night the house had been on the alert,
and scarcely any one had ventured to go to bed. Rosalind had spent half
the night in the hall with her uncle, expecting every moment a summons
to the sick-room, to what everybody believed to be the deatbed of the
sufferer; and there had crept through the house a whisper, how
originating no one could tell, that it was after an interview with
Russell that the fit had come on, and that she had carried him some
information about Madam which had almost killed him. Nobody had any
doubt that it was to Madam that Russell’s report referred, and there
were many wonderings and questions in the background, where the servants
congregated, as to what it was. That Madam went out of nights; that she
met some one in the park, and there had long and agitated interviews;
that Jane knew all about it, more than any one, and could ruin her
mistress if she chose to speak; but that Russell too had found out a
deal, and that it had come to master’s ears through her; and full time
it did, for who ever heard of goings-on like this in a gentleman’s
house?--this is what was said among the servants. In superior regions
nothing was said at all. Rosalind and her uncle kept together, as
getting a vague comfort in the universal dreariness from being together.
Now and then John Trevanion stole to the door of his brother’s room,
which stood open to give all the air possible, to see or hear how things
were going. One time when he did so his face was working with emotion.
“Rosalind,” he said, in the whisper which they spoke in, though had they
spoken as loudly as their voices would permit no sound could have
reached the sick-room; “Rosalind, I think that woman is sublime. She
knows that the first thing he will do will be to harm and shame her, and
yet there she is, doing everything for him. I don’t know if she is a
sinner or not, but she is sublime--”
“Who are you speaking of as that woman?--of MY MOTHER, Uncle John?”
cried Rosalind, expanding and growing out of her soft girlhood into a
sort of indignant guardian angel. He shook his head impatiently and sat
down; and nothing more was said between them till the middle of the
night, when Dr. Beaton coming in told them the worst was over, and for
the moment the sick man would “pull through.” “But I’ll have that nurse
in confinement. I’ll send her to the asylum. It is just manslaughter,”
he said. Russell, very pale and frightened, was at her door when
Rosalind went up-stairs.
“The doctor says he will have you tried for manslaughter,” Rosalind
said, as she passed her. “No, I will not say good-night. You have all
but killed papa.”
“It is not I that have killed him,” said Russell; “it’s those that do
what they didn’t ought to.”
Rosalind, in her excitement, stamped her foot upon the floor.
“He says you shall be sent to the asylum; and I say you shall be sent
away from here. You are a bad woman. Perhaps now you will kill the
children to complete your work. We are none of us safe so long as you
are here.”
At this Russell gave a bitter cry and threw up her hands to heaven.
“The children,” she cried, “that I love like my own--that I give my
heart’s blood for--not safe! Oh, Miss Rosalind! God forgive you!--you,
that I have loved the best of all!”
“How should I forgive you?” cried Rosalind, relentless. “I will never
forgive you. Hate me if you please, but never dare to say you love me.
Love!--you don’t know what it is. You should go away to-night if it were
I who had the power and not mamma.”
“She has the power yet. She will not have it long,” the woman cried, in
her terror and passion. And she shut herself up in her room, which
communicated with the children’s, and flung herself on the floor in a
panic which was perhaps as tragical as any of the other sensations of
this confused and miserable house.
And yet when Rosalind went out next morning she was able to withdraw
herself, in a way inconceivable to any one who has not been young and
full of imaginations, from the miseries and terrors of the night. Mr.
Trevanion was much exhausted, but living, and in his worn-out, feeble
state required constant care and nursing, without being well enough to
repay that nursing with abuse, as was his wont. Rosalind, with no one to
turn to for companionship, went out and escaped. She got clear of that
small, yet so important, world, tingling with emotion, with death and
life in the balance, and everything that is most painful in life, and
escaped altogether, as if she had possessed those wings of a dove for
which we all long, into another large and free and open world, in which
there was a wide, delightful air which blew in her face, and every kind
of curiosity and interest and hope. How it was she fell to thinking of
the curious fact that she had not, and had never had, a lover, at such a
moment, who can tell? Perhaps because it occurred to her at first that
it would be well to have something, somebody, to escape to and take
comfort in, when she was so full of trouble, without knowing that the
wide atmosphere and fresh sky and bare trees, that discharged, whenever
the breath of the wind touched them, a sharp little shower of
rain-drops, were enough at her age to woo her out of the misery which
was not altogether personal, though she was so wound up in the lives of
all the sufferers. She escaped. That thought about the lover, which was
intended to be pathetic, beguiled her into a faint laugh under her
breath; for indeed it was amusing, if even only ruefully amusing, to be
so unlike the rest of the young world. That opened to her, as it were,
the gate; and then her imagination ran on, like the lawless, sweet young
rover it was, to all kinds of things amusing and wonderful. Those whose
life is all to come, what a playground they have to fly into when the
outside is unharmonious! how to fill up all those years; what to do in
the time that is endless, that will never be done; how to meet those
strange events, those new persons, those delights and wonders that are
all waiting round the next and the next corner! If she had thought of
it she would have been ashamed of herself for this very amusement, but
fortunately she did not think of it, and so let herself go, like the
child she was. She took her intended walk through the park, and then, as
the morning was bright, after lingering at the gate a little, went out
into the road, and turned to the village without any particular
intention, because it was near and the red roofs shone in the light. It
was a fresh, bright morning, such as sometimes breaks the dulness of
November. The sky was as blue as summer, with wandering white cloudlets,
and not a sign of any harm, though there had been torrents of rain the
night before. Indeed, no doubt it was the pouring down of those torrents
which had cleared away the tinge of darkness from the clouds, which were
as innocent and filmy and light as if it had been June. Everything was
glistening and gleaming with wet, but that only made the country more
bright, and as Rosalind looked along the road, the sight of the red
village with its smoke rising ethereal into air so pure that it was a
happiness to gaze into its limpid, invisible depths, or rather heights,
ending in heavens, was enough to cheer any young soul. She went on, with
a little sense of adventure, for though she often went to the village,
it was rare to this girl to have the privilege of being absolutely
alone. The fresh air, the glistening hedgerows, the village roofs, in
all the shining of the sunshine, pleased her so much that she did not
see till she was close to it a break in the road, where the water which
had submerged the low fields on either side had broken across the higher
ground, finding a sort of channel in a slight hollow of the road. The
sight of a laborer plashing through it, with but little thought, though
it came up to the top of his rough boots, arrested Rosalind all at once.
What was she to do? _Her_ boots, though with the amount of high heel
which only a most independent mind can escape from, were clearly quite
unequal to this crossing. She could not but laugh to herself at the
small matter which stopped progress, and stood on the edge of it
measuring the distance with her eye, and calculating probabilities with
a smiling face, amused by the difficulty. While she stood thus she heard
a voice behind her calling to the laborer in front. “Hi!” some one said;
“Hallo, you there! help me to lift this log over the water, that the
lady may cross.” The person appealed to turned round, and so did
Rosalind. And then she felt that here was indeed an adventure. Behind
her, stooping over some large logs of wood on the side of the pathway,
was the man who had looked so intently at the carriage the other day
when she passed with her stepmother. Before she saw his face she was
sure, with a little jump of her heart, that it was the same man. He was
dressed in dark tweed clothes, somewhat rough, which might have been the
garb of a gentleman or of a gamekeeper, and did not fit him well, which
was more like the latter than the former. She could see, as he stooped,
his cheek and throat reddened as with the unusual exertion.
“Oh, please do not take the trouble,” she cried; “it is of no
consequence. I have nothing to do in the village.”
“It is no trouble,” he said; and in a minute or two the logs were rolled
across the side path so that she could pass. The man who had been called
upon to help was one of the farm-laborers whom she knew. She thanked him
cheerfully by name, and turned to the stranger, who stood with his hat
off, his pale face, which she remembered to have been so pale that she
thought him ill, now covered with a brilliant flush which made his eyes
shine. Rosalind was startled by the beauty of the face, but it was not
like that of the men she was accustomed to see. Something feminine,
something delicate and weak, was in it.
“You are very kind to take so much trouble; but I am afraid you have
over-exerted yourself,” she cried.
This made the young man blush more deeply still.
“I am not very strong,” he said half indignantly, “but not so weak as
that.” There was a tone of petulance in the reply; and then he added,
“Whatever trouble it might be is more than repaid,” with a somewhat
elaborate bow.
What did it mean? The face was refined and full of expression, but then
probably he was not a gentleman, Rosalind thought, and did not
understand. She said hurriedly again, “I am very much obliged to you,”
and went on, a little troubled by the event. She heard him make a few
steps after her. Was he going to follow? In her surprise it was almost
on her lips to call back William from the farm.
“I beg your pardon,” said the stranger, “but may I take the liberty of
asking how is Mr. Trevanion? I heard he was worse last night.”
Rosalind turned round, half reassured.
“Oh, do you know papa?” she said. “He has been very ill all night, but
he is better, though terribly exhausted. He has had some sleep this
morning.”
She was elevated upon the log, which she had begun to cross, and thus
looked down upon the stranger. If he knew her father, that made all the
difference; and surely the face was one with which she was not
unfamiliar.
“I do not know Mr. Trevanion, only one hears of him constantly in the
village. I am glad he is better.”
He hesitated, as if he too was about to mount the log.
“Oh, thank you,” said Rosalind, hurrying on.