There is nothing more strange in all the experiences of humanity than
the manner in which a great convulsion either in nature or in human
history ceases after a while to affect the world. Grass grows and
flowers wave over the soil which an earthquake has rent asunder; and the
lives of men are similarly torn in twain without leaving a much more
permanent result. The people whom we see one year crushed by some great
blow, when the next has come have begun to pursue their usual course
again. This means no infidelity of nature, no forgetting; but only the
inevitable progress by which the world keeps going. There is no trouble,
however terrible, that does not yield to the touch of time.
Some two years after these events Rosalind Trevanion felt herself,
almost against her will, emerging out of the great shadow which had
overwhelmed her life. She had been for a time swallowed up in the needs
of the family, all her powers demanded for the rearrangement of life on
its new basis, and everything less urgent banished from her. But by
degrees the most unnatural arrangements fall into the calm of habit, the
most unlooked-for duties become things of every day. Long before the
period at which this history resumes, it had ceased to be wonderful to
any one that Rosalind should take her place as head of the desolated
house. She assumed unconsciously that position of sister-mother which is
one of the most touching and beautiful that exist, with the ease which
necessity brings--not asking how she could do it, but doing it; as did
the bystanders who criticise every course of action and dictate what can
and what cannot be done, but who all accepted her in her new duties
with a composure which soon made everybody forget how strange, how
unlikely, to the girl those duties were. The disappearance of the
mother, the breaking-up of the house, was no doubt a nine-days’ wonder,
and gave occasion in the immediate district for endless discussions; but
the wonder died out as every wonder dies out. Outside of the county it
was but vaguely known, and to those who professed to tell the details
with authority there was but a dull response; natural sentiment at a
distance being all against the possibility that anything so
extraordinary and odious could be true. “You may depend upon it, a woman
who was going to behave so at the end must have shown signs of it from
the beginning,” people said, and the propagation of the rumor was thus
seriously discouraged. Mrs. Lennox, though she was not wise, had enough
of good sense and good feeling not to tell even to her most intimate
friends the circumstances of her sister-in-law’s disappearance; and this
not so much for Madam’s sake as for that of her brother, whose
extraordinary will appeared to her simple understanding so great a shame
and scandal that she kept it secret for Reginald’s sake. Indeed, all she
did in the matter was for Reginald’s sake. She did not entertain the
confidence in Madam with which Rosalind and John enshrined the fugitive.
To Rosalind, Mrs. Lennox said little on the subject, with a respect for
the girl’s innocence which persons of superior age and experience are
not always restrained by; but that John, a man who knew the world,
should go on as he did, was a thing which exasperated his sister. How he
could persuade himself of Mrs. Trevanion’s innocence was a thing she
could not explain. Why, what could it be? she asked herself, angrily.
Everybody knows that the wisest of men or women are capable of going
wrong for one cause; but what other could account for the flight of a
woman, of a mother from her children, the entire disappearance of her
out of all the scenes of her former life? When her brother told her that
there was no help for it, that in the interests of her children Madam
was compelled to go away, Aunt Sophy said “Stuff!” What was a woman
good for if she could not find some means of eluding such a monstrous
stipulation? “Do you think I would have minded him? I should have
disguised myself, hidden about, done anything rather than desert my
family,” she cried; and when it was suggested to her that Madam was too
honorable, too proud, too high-minded to deceive, Sophy said nothing but
“Stuff!” again. “Do you think anything in the world would make me
abandon my children--if I had any?” she cried. But though she was angry
with John and impatient of Rosalind, she kept the secret. And after a
time all audible comments on the subject died away. “There is something
mysterious about the matter,” people said; “I believe Mrs. Trevanion is
still living.” And then it began to be believed that she was ill and
obliged to travel for her health, which was the best suggestion that
could have been made.
And Rosalind gradually, but nevertheless fully, came out of the shadow
of that blighting cloud. What is there in human misery which can
permanently crush a heart under twenty? Nothing, at least save the last
and most intolerable of personal losses, and even then only in the case
of a passionate, undisciplined soul or a feeble body. Youth will
overcome everything if it has justice and fresh air and occupation. And
Rosalind made her way out of all the ways of gloom and misery to the sky
and sunshine. Her memory had, indeed, an indelible scar upon it at that
place. She could not turn back and think of the extraordinary mystery
and anguish of that terrible moment without a convulsion of the heart,
and sense that all the foundations of the earth had been shaken. But
happily, at her age, there is not much need of turning back upon the
past. She shivered when the momentary recollection crossed her mind, but
could always throw it off and come back to the present, to the future,
which are always so much more congenial.
This great catastrophe, which made a sort of chasm between her and her
former life, had given a certain maturity to Rosalind. At twenty she had
already much of the dignity, the self-possession, the seriousness of a
more advanced age. She had something of the air of a young married
woman, a young mother, developed by the early experiences of life. The
mere freshness of girlhood, even when it is most exquisite, has a less
perfect charm than this; and the fact that Rosalind was still a girl,
notwithstanding the sweet and noble gravity of her responsible position,
added to her an exceptional charm. She was supposed by most people to be
five years at least older than she was: and she was the mother of her
brothers and sisters, at once more and less than a mother; perhaps less
anxious, perhaps more indulgent, not old enough to perceive with the
same clearness or from the same point of view, seeing from the level of
the children more than perhaps a mother can. To see her with her little
brother in her lap was the most lovely of pictures. Something more
exquisite even than maternity was in this virgin-motherhood. She was a
better type of the second mother than any wife. This made a sort of halo
around the young creature who had so many responsibilities. But yet in
her heart Rosalind was only a girl; the other half of her had not
progressed beyond where it was before that great crisis. There was
within her a sort of decisive consciousness of the apparent maturity
which she had thus acquired, and she only such a child--a girl at heart.
In this profound girlish soul of hers, which was her very self, while
the other was more or less the product of circumstances, it still
occurred to Rosalind now and then to wonder how it was that she had
never had a lover. Even this was meant in a manner of her own. Miss
Trevanion of Highcourt had not been without suitors; men who had admired
her beauty or her position. But these were not at all what she meant by
a lover. She meant what an imaginative girl means when such a thought
crosses her mind. She meant Romeo, or perhaps Hamlet--had love been
restored to the possibilities of that noblest of all disenchanted
souls--or even such a symbol as Sir Kenneth. She wondered whether it
would ever be hers to find wandering about the world the other part of
her, him who would understand every thought and feeling, him to whom it
would be needless to speak or to explain, who would know; him for whom
mighty love would cleave in twain the burden of a single pain and part
it, giving half to him. The world, she thought, could not hold together
as it did under the heavens, had it ceased to be possible that men and
women should meet each other so. But such a meeting had never occurred
yet in Rosalind’s experience, and seeing how common it was, how
invariable an occurrence in the experience of all maidens of poetry and
fiction, the failure occasioned her always a little surprise. Had she
never seen any one, met about the world any form, in which she could
embody such a possibility? She did not put this question to herself
plainly, but there was in her imagination a sort of involuntary answer
to it, or rather the ghost of an answer, which would sometimes make
itself known, from without, she thought, more than from within--as if a
face had suddenly looked at her, or a whisper been breathed in her ear.
She did not give any name to this vision or endeavor to identify it.
But imagination is obstinate and not to be quenched, and in inadvertent
moments she half acknowledged to herself that it had a being and a name.
Who or what he was, indeed, she could not tell; but sometimes in her
imagination the remembered tone of a voice would thrill her ears, or a
pair of eyes would look into hers. This recollection or imagination
would flash upon her at the most inappropriate moments; sometimes when
she was busy with her semi-maternal cares, or full of household
occupation which left her thoughts free--moments when she was without
defence. Indeed, temptation would come upon her in this respect from the
most innocent quarter, from her little brother, who looked up at her
with eyes that were like the eyes of her dream. Was that why he had
become her darling, her favorite, among the children? Oh, no; it was
because he was the youngest, the baby, the one to whom a mother was most
of all wanting. Aunt Sophy, indeed, who was so fond of finding out
likenesses, had said-- And there was a certain truth in it. Johnny’s eyes
were very large and dark, shining out of the paleness of his little
face; he was a delicate child; or perhaps only a pale-faced child
looking delicate, for there never was anything the matter with him. His
eyes were very large for a child, appearing so, perhaps, because he was
himself so little; a child of fine organization, with the most delicate,
pure complexion, and blue veins showing distinctly through the delicate
tissue of his skin. Rosalind felt a sort of dreamy bliss come over her
when Johnny fixed his great, soft eyes upon her, looking up with a
child’s devout attention. She loved the child dearly, was not that
enough? And then there was the suggestion. Likenesses are very curious;
they are so arbitrary, no one can tell how they come; there was a
likeness, she admitted to herself; and then wondered--half wishing it,
half angry with herself for the idea--whether perhaps it was the
likeness to her little brother which had impressed the face of a
stranger so deeply upon her dreams.
Who was he? Where did he come from? Where, all this long time, for these
many months, had he gone? If it was because of her he had come to the
village, how strange that he should never have appeared again! It was
impossible it could have been for her; yet, if not for her, for whom
could he have come? She asked herself these questions so often that her
vision gradually lost identity and became a tradition, an abstraction,
the true lover after whom she had been wondering. She endowed him with
all the qualities which girls most dearly prize. She talked to him upon
every subject under heaven. In all possible emergencies that arose to
her fancy he came and stood by her and helped her. No real man is ever
so noble, so tender, so generous as such an ideal man can be. And
Rosalind forgot altogether that she had asked herself whether it was
certain that he was a gentleman, the original of this shadowy figure
which had got into her imagination she scarcely could tell how.