Rosalind spent a very restless night. She could not sleep, and the rain
coming down in torrents irritated her with its ceaseless pattering. She
thought, she could not tell why, of the poor people who were out in
it--travellers, wayfarers, poor vagrants, such as she had seen about the
country roads. What would the miserable creatures do in such a dismal
night? As she lay awake in the darkness she pictured them to herself,
drenched and cold, dragging along the muddy ways. No one in whom she was
interested was likely to be reduced to such misery, but she thought of
them, she could not tell why. She had knocked at Mrs. Trevanion’s door
as she came up-stairs, longing to go in to say another word, to give her
a kiss in her weariness. Rosalind had an ache and terrible question in
her heart which she had never been able to get rid of, notwithstanding
the closeness of the intercourse on the funeral day and the exuberant
profession of faith to which she had given vent: “You can do no wrong.”
Her heart had cried out this protestation of faith, but in her mind
there had been a terrible drawing back, like that of the wave which has
dashed brilliantly upon a stony beach only to groan and turn back again,
carrying everything with it. Through all this sleepless night she lay
balancing between these two sensations--the enthusiasm and the doubt.
Her mother! It seemed a sort of blasphemy to judge or question that
highest of all human authorities--that type and impersonation of all
that was best. And yet it would force itself upon her, in spite of all
her holding back. Where was she going that night? Supposing the former
events nothing, what, oh, what was the new-made widow going to do on the
eve of her husband’s funeral out in the park, all disguised and
concealed in the dusk? The more Rosalind denied her doubts expression
the more bitterly did that picture force itself upon her--the veiled,
muffled figure, the watching accomplice, and the door so stealthily
opened. Without practice and knowledge and experience, who could have
done all that? If Rosalind herself wanted to steal out quietly, a
hundred hinderances started up in her way. If she tried anything of the
kind she knew very well that every individual whom she wished to avoid
would meet her and find her out. It is so with the innocent, but with
those who are used to concealment, not so. These were the things that
said themselves in her mind without any consent of hers as she labored
through the night. And when the first faint sounds of waking began to be
audible, a distant door opening, an indication that some one was
stirring, Rosalind got up too, unable to bear it any longer. She sprang
out of bed and wrapped herself in her dressing-gown, resolved to go to
her mother’s room and disperse all those ghosts of night. How often had
she run there in childish troubles and shaken them off! That last court
of appeal had never been closed to her. A kiss, a touch of the soft hand
upon her head, a comforting word, had charmed away every spectre again
and again. Perhaps Rosalind thought she would have the courage to speak
all out, perhaps to have her doubts set at rest forever; but even if she
had not courage for that, the mere sight of Mrs. Trevanion was enough to
dispel all prejudices, to make an end of all doubts. It was quite dark
in the passages as she flitted across the large opening of the stairs.
Down-stairs in the great hall there was a spark of light, where a
housemaid, kneeling within the great chimney, was lighting the fire.
There was a certain relief even in this, in the feeling of a new day and
life begun again. Rosalind glided like a ghost, in her warm
dressing-gown, to Mrs. Trevanion’s door. She knocked softly, but there
was no reply. Little wonder, at this hour of the morning; no doubt the
mother was asleep. Rosalind opened the door.
There is a kind of horror of which it is difficult to give any
description in the sensations of one who goes into a room expecting to
find a sleeper in the safety and calm of natural repose and finds it
empty, cold, and vacant. The shock is extraordinary. The certainty that
the inhabitant must be there is so profound, and in a moment is replaced
by an uncertainty which nothing can equal--a wild dread that fears it
knows not what, but always the worst that can be feared. Rosalind went
in with the soft yet confident step of a child, who knows that the
mother will wake at a touch, almost at a look, and turn with a smile and
a kiss to listen, whatever the story that is brought to her may be.
Fuller confidence never was. She did not even look before going straight
to the bedside. She had, indeed, knelt down there before she found out.
Then she sprang to her feet again with the cry of one who had touched
death unawares. It was like death to her, the touch of the cold, smooth
linen, all folded as it had been in preparation for the inmate--who was
to sleep there no more. She looked round the room as if asking an answer
from every corner. “Mother, where are you? Mother! Where are you,
mother?” she cried, with a wild voice of astonishment and dismay.
There was no light in the room; a faint paleness to show the window, a
silence that was terrible, an atmosphere as of death itself. Rosalind
flew, half frantic, into the dressing-room adjoining, which for some
time past had been occupied by Jane. There a night-light which had been
left burning flickered feebly, on the point of extinction. The faint
light showed the same vacancy--the bed spread in cold order, everything
empty, still. Rosalind felt her senses giving way. Her impulse was to
rush out through the house, calling, asking, Where were they? Death
seemed to be in the place--death more mysterious and more terrible than
that with which she had been made familiar. After a pause she left the
room and hurried breathless to that occupied by her uncle. How different
there was the atmosphere, charged with human breath, warm with
occupation. She burst in, too terrified for thought.
“Uncle John!” she cried, “Uncle John!” taking him by the shoulder.
It was not easy to wake him out of his deep sleep. At last he sat up in
his bed, half awake, and looked at her with consternation.
“Rosalind! what is the matter?” he cried.
“Mamma is not in her room--where is she, where is she?” the girl
demanded, standing over him like a ghost in the dark.
“Your mother is not-- I--I suppose she’s tired, like all the rest of us,”
he said, with a sleepy desire to escape this premature awakening. “Why,
it’s dark still, Rosalind. Go back to bed, my dear. Your mother--”
“Listen, Uncle John. Mamma is not in her room. No one has slept there
to-night; it is all empty; my mother is gone, is gone! Where has she
gone?” the girl cried, wildly. “She has not been there all night.”
“Good God!” John Trevanion cried. He was entirely roused now. “Rosalind,
you must be making some mistake.”
“There is no mistake. I thought perhaps you might know something. No one
has slept there to-night. Oh, Uncle John, Uncle John, where is my
mother? Let us go and find her before everybody knows.”
“Rosalind, leave me, and I will get up. I can tell you nothing--yes, I
can tell you something; but I never thought it would be like this. It is
your father who has sent her away.”
“Papa!” the girl cried; “oh, Uncle John, stop before you have taken
everything away from me; neither father nor mother!--you take everything
from me!” she said, with a cry of despair.
“Go away,” he said, “and get dressed, Rosalind, and then we can see
whether there is anything to be done.”
An hour later they stood together by the half-kindled fire in the hall.
John Trevanion had gone through the empty rooms with his niece, who was
distracted, not knowing what she did. By this time a pale and gray
daylight, which looked like cold and misery made visible, had diffused
itself through the great house. That chill visibleness, showing all the
arrangements of the room prepared for rest and slumber, where nobody had
slept, had something terrible in it that struck them both with awe.
There was no letter, no sign to be found of leave-taking. When they
opened the wardrobe and drawers, a few dresses and necessaries were
found to be gone, and it appeared that Jane had sent two small boxes to
the village which she had represented to be old clothes, “colored
things,” for which her mistress would now have no need. It was to
Rosalind like a blow in the dark, a buffet from some ghostly hand,
additional to her other pain, when she found it was these “colored
things” and not the prepared, newly made mourning which her stepmother
had taken with her. This seemed a cutting off from them, an entire
abandonment, which made her misery deeper; but naturally John Trevanion
did not think of that. He told her the story of the will while they
stood together in the hall. But he could think of nothing to do, nor
could he give any hope that this terrible event was a thing to be undone
or concealed. “It must have happened,” he said, “sooner or later; and
though it is a shock--a great shock--”
“Oh, Uncle John, it is--there was never anything so terrible. How can
you use ordinary words? A shock! If the wind had blown down a tree it
would be a shock. Don’t you see, it is the house that has been blown
down? we have nothing--nothing to shelter us, we children. My mother and
my father! We are orphans, and far, far worse than orphans. We having
nothing left but shame--nothing but shame!”
“Rosalind, it is worse for the others than for you. You, at least, are
clear of it; she is not your mother.”
“She is all the mother I have ever known,” Rosalind cried for the
hundredth time. “And,” she added, with quivering lips, “I am the
daughter of the man who on his death-bed has brought shame upon his own,
and disgraced the wife that was like an angel to him. If the other could
be got over, that can never be got over. He did it, and he cannot undo
it. And she is wicked too. She should not have yielded like that; she
should have resisted--she should have refused; she should not have gone
away.”
“Had she done so it would have been our duty to insist upon it,” said
John Trevanion, sadly. “We had no alternative. You will find when you
think it over that this sudden going is for the best.”
“Oh, that is so easy to say when it is not your heart that is wrung, but
some one else’s; and how can it ever be,” cried Rosalind, with a dismal
logic which many have employed before her, “that what is all wrong from
beginning to end can be for the best?”
This was the beginning of a day more miserable than words can describe.
They made no attempt to conceal the calamity; it was impossible to
conceal it. The first astounded and terror-stricken housemaid who
entered the room spread it over the house like wildfire. Madam had gone
away. Madam had not slept in her bed all night. When Rosalind, who could
not rest, made one of her many aimless journeys up-stairs, she heard a
wail from the nurseries, and Russell, rushing out, suddenly confronted
her. The woman was pale with excitement; and there was a mixture of
compunction and triumph and horror in her eyes.
“What does this mean, Miss Rosalind? Tell me, for God’s sake!” she
cried.
It did Rosalind a little good in her misery to find herself in front of
an actor in this catastrophe; one who was guilty and could be made to
suffer. “It means,” she cried, with sudden rage, “that you must leave my
mother’s children at once--this very moment! My uncle will give you your
wages, whatever you want, but you shall not stay here, not an hour.”
“My wages!” the woman cried, with a sort of scream; “do I care for
wages? Leave my babies, as I have brought up? Oh, never, never! You may
say what you please, you that were always unnatural, that held for her
instead of your own flesh and blood. You are cruel, cruel; but I won’t
stand it-- I won’t. There’s more to be consulted, Miss Rosalind, than
you.”
“I would be more cruel if I could-- I would strike you,” cried the
impassioned girl, clinching her small hands, “if it were not a shame for
a lady to do it--you, who have taken away mother from me and made me
hate and despise my own father, oh, God forgive me! And it is your
doing, you miserable woman. Let me never see you again. To see you is
like death to me. Go away--go away!”
“And yet I was better than a mother to you once,” said Russell, who had
cried out and put her hand to her heart as if she had received a blow.
Her heart was tender to her nursling, though pitiless otherwise. “I
saved your life,” she cried, beginning to weep; “I took you when your
true mother died. You would have loved me but for that woman--that--”
Rosalind stamped her foot passionately upon the floor; she was
transported by misery and wrath. “Do not dare to speak to me! Go
away--go out of the house. Uncle John,” she cried, hurrying to the
balustrade and looking down into the hall where he stood, too wretched
to observe what was going on, “will you come and turn this woman away?”
He came slowly up-stairs at this call, with his hands in his pockets,
every line of his figure expressing despondency and dismay. It was only
when he came in sight of Russell, flushed, crying, and injured, yet
defiant too, that he understood what Rosalind meant by the appeal. “Yes,
it will be well that you should go,” he said. “You have made mischief
that never can be mended. No one in this house will ever forgive you.
The best thing you can do is to go--”
“The mischief was not my making,” cried Russell. “It’s not them that
tells but them that goes wrong that are to blame. And the
children--there’s the children to think of--who will take care of them
like me? I’d die sooner than leave the children. They’re the same as my
flesh and blood. They have been in my hands since ever they were born,”
the woman cried with passion. “Oh, Mr. Trevanion, you that have always
been known for a kind gentleman, let me stay with the children! Their
mother, she can desert them, but I can’t; it will break my heart.”
“You had better go,” said John Trevanion, with lowering brows. At this
moment Reginald appeared on the scene from another direction, pulling on
his jacket in great hurry and excitement. “What does it all mean?” the
boy cried, full of agitation. “Oh, if it’s only Russell! They told me
some story about-- Why are you bullying Russell, Uncle John?”
“Oh, Mr. Reginald, you’ll speak for me. You are my own boy, and you are
the real master. Don’t let them break my heart,” cried Russell, holding
out her imploring hands.
“Oh, if it’s only Russell,” the boy cried, relieved; “but they
said--they told me--”
Another door opened as he spoke, and Aunt Sophy, dishevelled, the gray
locks falling about her shoulders, a dressing-gown huddled about her
ample figure, appeared suddenly. “For God’s sake, speak low! What does
it all mean? Don’t expose everything to the servants, whatever it is,”
she cried.