As so often happens when all is prepared and ready for the catastrophe,
the stroke of fate was averted. That night proved better than the last,
and then there passed two or three quiet days. It was even possible, the
doctor thought, that the alarm might be a false one, and the patient go
on, if tranquil and undisturbed, until, in the course of nature, another
crisis prepared itself or external commotion accelerated nature. He had
received his wife back after her few hours’ banishment with a sort of
chuckling satisfaction, and though even his reduced and enfeebled state
did not make him incapable of offence, the insulting remarks he
addressed to her were no more than his ordinary method. Madam said
nothing of them; she seemed, strangely enough, glad to return to her
martyrdom. It was better, it appeared, than the sensation of being sent
away. She was with him, without rest or intermission, the whole day and
a great portion of the night. The two or three hours allowed her for
repose were in the middle of the night, and she never stirred abroad nor
tasted the fresh air through this period of confinement. The drives
which had been her daily refreshment were stopped, along with every
other possibility of freedom. In the meantime there appeared something
like a fresh development of confidence and dependence upon her, which
wrung the heart of the enemy in her stronghold, and made Russell think
her work had been all in vain. Mr. Trevanion could not, it was said,
bear his wife out of his sight.
It is a mistake when a dying person thus keeps all his world waiting.
The sympathetic faculties are worn out. The household in general felt a
slight sensation of resentment towards the sick man who had cheated them
into so much interest. It was not as if he had been a man whom his
dependents loved, and he had defrauded them of that profound and serious
interest with which the last steps of any human creature--unless in a
hospital or other agglomeration of humanity, where individual
characteristics are abolished--are accompanied. The servants, who had
with a little awe attended the coming of death, were half disappointed,
half disgusted by the delay. Even John Trevanion, who had made up his
mind very seriously and somewhat against his own convictions to wait
“till all was over,” had a sensation of annoyance: he might go on for
weeks, perhaps for months, all the winter--“thank God!” they said,
mechanically; but John could not help thinking how inconvenient it would
be to come back--to hang on all the winter, never able to go anywhere.
It would have been so much more considerate to get it over at once, but
Reginald was never one who considered other people’s convenience. Dr.
Beaton, who had no desire to leave Highcourt, and who, besides, had a
doctor’s satisfaction in a successful fight with disease, took it much
more pleasantly. He rubbed his hands and expressed his hopes of
“pulling” his patient through, with much unnecessary cordiality. “Let us
but stave off all trouble till spring, and there is no saying what may
happen,” he said, jauntily. “The summer will be all in his favor, and
before next winter we may get him away.” The younger members of the
family took this for granted. Reginald, who had been sent for from
school, begged his mother another time to be sure there was some real
need for it before summoning a fellow home in the middle of the half;
and Rosalind entirely recovered her spirits. The cloud that had hung
over the house seemed about to melt away. Nobody was aware of the
agitating conferences which Jane held with her mistress in the few
moments when they saw each other; or the miserable anxiety which
contended in Madam’s mind with her evident and necessary duties. She had
buried her troubles too long in her own bosom to exhibit them now. And
thus the days passed slowly away; the patient had not yet been allowed
to leave his bed, and, indeed, was in a state of alarming feebleness,
but that was all.
Rosalind was left very much to herself during these days. She had now no
longer any one to go out with. Sometimes, indeed, her uncle would
propose a walk, but that at the most occupied but a small part of the
day, and all her usual occupations had been suspended in the general
excitement. She took to wandering about the park, where she could stray
alone as much as pleased her, fearing no intrusion. A week or ten days
after the visit of Mr. Blake, she was walking near the lake which was
the pride of Highcourt. In summer the banks of this piece of water were
a mass of flowering shrubs, and on the little artificial island in the
middle was a little equally artificial cottage, the creation of
Rosalind’s grandmother, where still the children in summer would often
go to have tea. One or two boats lay at a little landing-place for the
purpose of transporting visitors, and it was one of the pleasures of the
neighborhood, when the family were absent, to visit the Bijou, as it was
called. At one end of the little lake was a road leading from the
village, to which the public of the place had a right. It was perhaps
out of weariness with the monotony of her lonely walks that Rosalind
directed her steps that way on an afternoon when all was cold and clear,
an orange-red sunset preparing in the west, and indications of frost in
the air. The lake caught the reflection of the sunset blaze and was all
barred with crimson and gold, with the steely blue of its surface coming
in around and intensifying every tint. Rosalind walked slowly round the
margin of the water, and thought of the happy afternoons when the
children and their mother had been rowed across, she herself and Rex
taking the control of the boat. The water looked tempting, with its bars
of color, and the little red roof of the Bijou blazed in the slanting
light. She played with the boats at the landing-place, pushing one into
the water with a half fancy to push forth into the lake, until it had
got almost too far off to be pulled back again, and gave her some
trouble, standing on the edge of the tiny pier with an oar in her hand,
to bring it back to its little anchorage. She was standing thus, her
figure relieved against the still, shining surface of the water, when
she heard a footstep behind her, and thinking it the man who had charge
of the cottage and the boats, called to him without turning round, “Come
here, Dunmore; I have loosed this boat and I can’t get it back--”
The footstep advanced with a certain hesitation. Then an unfamiliar
voice said, “I am not Dunmore--but if you will allow me to help you--”
She started and turned round. It was the same stranger whom she had
already twice seen on the road. “Oh! pray don’t let me trouble you.
Dunmore will be here directly,” she said.
This did not, however, prevent the young man from rendering the
necessary assistance. He got into one of the nearer boats, and
stretching out from the bow of it, secured the stray pinnace. It was not
a dangerous act, nor even one that gave the passer-by much trouble, but
Rosalind, partly out of a sense that she had been ungracious, partly,
perhaps--who can tell--out of the utter monotony of all around her,
thanked him with eagerness. “I am sorry to give you trouble,” she said
again.
“It is no trouble, it is a pleasure.” Was he going to be so sensible, so
judicious, as to go away after this? He seemed to intend so. He put on
his hat after bowing to her, and turned away, but then there seemed to
be an after-thought which struck him. He turned back again, took off his
hat again, and said: “I beg your pardon, but may I ask for Mr.
Trevanion? The village news is so uncertain.”
“My father is still very ill,” said Rosalind, “but it is thought there
is now some hope.”
“That is good news indeed,” the stranger said. Certainly he had a most
interesting face. It could not be possible that a man with such a
countenance was “not a gentleman,” that most damning of all sentences.
His face was refined and delicate; his eyes large, liquid, full of
meaning, which was increased by the air of weakness which made them
larger and brighter than eyes in ordinary circumstances. And certainly
it was kind of him to be glad.
“Oh, yes, you told me before you knew my father,” Rosalind said.
“I cannot claim to know Mr. Trevanion; but I do know a member of the
family very well, and I have heard of him all my life.”
Rosalind was no more afraid of a young man than of an old woman, and she
thought she had been unjust to this stranger, who, after all,
notwithstanding his rough dress, had nothing about him to find fault
with. She said, “Yes; perhaps my Uncle John? In any case I am much
obliged to you, both for helping me and for your interest in papa.”
“May I sometimes ask how he is? The villagers are so vague.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Rosalind; “they have a bulletin at the lodge, or
if you care to come so far as Highcourt, you will always have the last
report.”
“You are very kind, I will not come to the house. But I know that you
often walk in the park. If I may ask you when we--chance to meet?”
This suggestion startled Rosalind. It awoke in her again that vague
alarm--not, perhaps, a gentleman. But when she looked at the eyes which
were searching hers with so sensitive a perception of every shade of
expression, she became confused and did not know what to think. He was
so quickly sensible of every change that he saw he had taken a wrong
step. He ought to have gone further, and perceived what the wrong step
was, but she thought he was puzzled and did not discover this
instinctively, as a gentleman would have done. She withdrew a step or
two involuntarily. “Oh, no,” she said with gentle dignity, “I do not
always walk the same way; but you may be sure of seeing the bulletin at
the lodge.” And with this she made him a courtesy and walked away, not
hurrying, to show any alarm, but taking a path which was quite out of
the way of the public, and where he could not follow. Rosalind felt a
little thrill of agitation in her as she went home. Who could he be, and
what did he do here, and why did he throw himself in her way? If she had
been a girl of a vulgarly romantic imagination, she would no doubt have
jumped at the idea of a secret adoration which had brought him to the
poor little village for her sake, for the chance of a passing encounter.
But Rosalind was not of this turn of imagination, and that undefined
doubt which wavered in her mind did a great deal to damp the wings of
any such fancy. What he had said was almost equal to asking her to meet
him in the park. She blushed all over at the thought--at the curious
impossibility of it, the want of knowledge. It did not seem an insult to
her, but such an incomprehensible ignorance in him that she was ashamed
of it; that he should have been capable of such a mistake. Not a
gentleman! Oh, surely he could never, never-- And yet the testimony of
those fine, refined features--the mouth so delicate and sensitive, the
eyes so eloquent--was of such a different kind. And was it Uncle John he
knew? But Uncle John had passed him on the road and had not known him.
It was very strange altogether. She could not banish the beautiful,
pleading eyes out of her mind. How they looked at her! They were almost
a child’s eyes in their uncertainty and wistfulness, reading her face to
see how far to go. And altogether he had the air of extreme youth,
almost as young as herself, which, of course, in a man is boyhood. For
what is a man of twenty? ten years, and more, younger and less
experienced than a woman of that sober age. There was a sort of yearning
of pity in her heart towards him, just tempered by that doubt. Poor boy!
how badly he must have been brought up--how sadly ignorant not to know
that a gentleman-- And then she began to remember Lord Lytton’s novels,
some of which she had read. There would have been nothing out of place
in them had such a youth so addressed a lady. He was, indeed, not at all
unlike a young man in Lord Lytton. He interested her very much, and
filled her mind as she went lightly home. Who could he be, and why so
anxious about her father’s health? or was that merely a reason for
addressing her--a way, perhaps he thought, of securing her acquaintance,
making up some sort of private understanding between them. Had not
Rosalind heard somewhere that a boy was opt to select a much older woman
as the object of his first admiration? Perhaps that might furnish an
explanation for it, for he must be very young, not more than a boy.
When she got home her first step into the house was enough to drive
every thought of this description out of her mind. She was aware of the
change before she could ask--before she saw even a servant of whom to
inquire. The hall, all the rooms, were vacant. She could find nobody,
until, coming back after an ineffectual search, she met Jane coming away
from the sick-room, carrying various things that had been used there.
Jane shook her head in answer to Rosalind’s question. “Oh, very bad
again--worse than ever. No one can tell what has brought it on. Another
attack, worse than any he has had. I think, Miss Rosalind,” Jane said,
drawing close with a tremulous shrill whisper, “it was that dreadful
woman that had got in again the moment my poor lady’s back was turned.”
“What dreadful woman?”
“Oh, Russell, Miss Rosalind. My poor lady came out of the room for five
minutes-- I don’t think it was five minutes. She was faint with fatigue;
and all at once we heard a cry. Oh, it was not master, it was that
woman. There she was, lying at the room door in hysterics, or whatever
you call them. And the spasms came on again directly. I pushed her out
of my lady’s way; she may be lying there yet, for anything I know. This
time he will never get better, Miss Rosalind,” Jane said.
“Oh, do not say so--do not say so,” the girl cried. He had not been a
kind father nor a generous master. But such was the awe of it, and the
quivering sympathy of human nature, that even the woman wept as Rosalind
threw herself upon her shoulder. The house was full of the atmosphere of
death.