It happened after these events that sickness crept into Mrs. Lennox’s
cheerful house. One of the children had a lingering fever; and Aunt
Sophy herself was troubled with headaches, and not up to the mark, the
doctor said. This no doubt arose, according to the infallible decrees of
sanitary science, from some deficiency in the drainage, notwithstanding
that a great deal of trouble had already been taken, and that a local
functionary and expert in such matters had been almost resident in the
house for some months, to set right these sources of all evil. As soon,
however, as it was understood that for the sixth or seventh time the
house would have to be undermined, Mrs. Lennox came to a resolution
which, as she said, she had “always intended;” and that was to “go
abroad.” To go abroad is a thing which recommends itself to most women
as an infallible mode of procuring pleasure. They may not like it when
they are there. Foreign “ways” may be a weariness to their souls, and
foreign languages a series of unholy mysteries which they do not attempt
to fathom; but going abroad is a panacea for all dulness and a good many
maladies. The Englishwoman of simple mind is sure that she will be
warmed and soothed, that the sun will always shine, the skies never
rain, and everything go to her wish “abroad.” She returns discontented;
but she goes away always hopeful, scarcely able to conceive that gray
skies and cold winds prevail anywhere except in her own island. Mrs.
Lennox was of this simple-minded order. When she was driven to the
depths of her recollection she could, indeed, remember a great many
instances to the contrary, but in the abstract she felt that these were
accidents, and, the likelihood was, would never occur again. And then it
would be so good for the children! They would learn languages without
knowing, without any trouble at all. With this happy persuasion English
families every day convey their hapless babes into the depths of
Normandy, for example, to learn French. Mrs. Lennox went to the Riviera,
as was inevitable, and afterwards to other places, thinking it as well,
as she said, while they were abroad, to see as much as possible. It was
no small business to get the little caravansary under way, and when it
was accomplished it may be doubted how much advantage it was to the
children for whose good, according to Aunt Sophy, the journey was
prolonged. Little Amy and Johnny wandered with big eyes after the nurse
who had replaced Russell, through Rome and Florence, and gazed alarmed
at the towers of Bologna, which the children thought were falling upon
them, without deriving very much instruction from the sight.
It was a thoroughly English party, like many another, carrying its own
little atmosphere about it and all its insular customs. The first thing
they did on arriving at a new place was to establish a little England in
the foreign hotel or _chambres garnies_ which they occupied. The
sitting-room at the inn took at once a kind of _faux_ air of the
dining-room at the Elms, Mrs. Lennox’s work and her basket of crewels
and her footstool being placed in the usual exact order, and a
writing-table arranged for the family letters in the same light as that
approved at home. And then there were elaborate arrangements for the
nursery dinner at a proper nursery hour, and for roast mutton and rice
pudding, such as were fit food for British subjects of the age of nine
and seven. Then the whereabouts of the English church was inquired into,
and the English chemist, and the bookshop where English books, and
especially the editions of Baron Tauchnitz, and perhaps English
newspapers, might be had. Having ascertained all this, and to the best
of her power obliterated all difference between Cannes, or Genoa, or
Florence, or even Rome, and the neighborhood of Clifton, Mrs. Lennox
began to enjoy herself in a mild way. She took her daily drive, and
looked at the Italians from her carriage with a certain disapproval,
much curiosity, and sometimes amusement. She disapproved of them because
they were not English, in a general way. She was too sweet-tempered to
conclude, as some of the ladies did whom she met at the hotel, that they
were universally liars, cheats, and extortioners; but they were not
English; though, perhaps, poor things, that was not exactly their fault.
This was how she travelled, and in a sober way enjoyed it. She thought
the Riviera very pretty, if there were not so many sick people about;
and Florence very pretty too. “But I have been here before, you know, my
dear,” she said; therefore her admiration was calm, and never rose into
any of the raptures with which Rosalind sometimes was roused by a new
landscape. She lived just as she would have done if she had never
stirred from home, and was moderately happy, as happy as a person of her
age has any right to be. The children came to her at the same hours,
they had their dinner and walk at the same hours, and they all went to
church on Sunday just in the same way. The _table d’hôte_, at which she
usually dined with Rosalind, was the only difference of importance
between her life as a traveller and her life at home. She thought it was
rather like a dinner-party without the trouble, and as she soon got to
know a select little “set” of English of her own condition in her
hotel, and sat with them, the public table grew more and more like a
private one, except in so far as that all the guests had the delightful
privilege of finding fault. The clergyman called upon her, and made
little appeals to her for deserving cases, and pleaded that Rosalind
should help in the music, and talked the talk of a small parish to her
contented ears. All this made her very much at home, while still
enjoying the gentle excitement of being abroad. And at the end of six
months Mrs. Lennox began to feel that she was quite a cosmopolitan, able
to adapt herself to all circumstances, and getting the full good of
foreign travel, which, as she declared she was doing it entirely for the
children, was a repayment of her goodness upon which she had not
calculated. “I feel quite a woman of the world,” was what Aunt Sophy
said.
Perhaps, however, Rosalind, placed as she was between the children and
their guardian, neither too old nor too young for such enjoyment, was,
as lawyers say, the true beneficiary. She had the disadvantage of
visiting a great many places of interest with companions who did not
appreciate or understand them, it is true; with Aunt Sophy, who thought
that the pictures as well as the views were pretty; and with the sharp
little sister who thought picture-galleries and mountain landscapes
equally a bore. But, notwithstanding, with that capacity for separating
herself from her surroundings which belongs to the young, Rosalind was
able to get a great deal of enjoyment as she moved along in Mrs.
Lennox’s train. Aunts in general are not expected to care for scenery;
they care for being comfortable, for getting their meals, and especially
the children’s meals, at the proper time, and being as little disturbed
in their ordinary routine as possible. When this is fully granted, a
girl can usually manage to get a good deal of pleasure under their
portly shadow. Rosalind saw everything as if nobody had ever seen it
before; the most hackneyed scenes were newly created for her, and came
upon her with a surprise almost more delightful than anything in life,
certainly more delightful than anything that did not immediately
concern the heart and affections. She thought, indeed, sometimes
wistfully, that if it had been her mother, that never-to-be-forgotten
and always trusted friend, who could have understood everything and felt
with her, and added a charm wherever they went, the enjoyment would have
been far greater. But then her heart would fall into painful questions
as to where and with what companions that friend might now be, and rise
into prayers, sometimes that they might meet to-morrow, sometimes that
they might never meet--that nothing which could diminish her respect and
devotion should ever be made known to her. Then, too, sometimes Rosalind
would ask herself, in the leisure of her solitude, what this journey
might have been had _some one else_ been of the party? This _some one
else_ was not Roland Hamerton: that was certain. She could not say to
herself, either, that it was Arthur Rivers. It was--well, some one with
great eyes, dark and liquid, whose power of vision would be more
refined, more educated than that of Rosalind, who would know all the
associations and all the poetry, and make everything that was beautiful
before more beautiful by the charm of his superior knowledge. Perhaps
she felt, too, that it was more modest, more maidenly, to allow a
longing for the companionship of one whom she did not know, who was a
mere ideal, the symbol of love, or genius, or poetry, she did not know
which, than to wish in straightforward terms for the lover whom she
knew, who was a man, and not a symbol. Her imagination was too shy, too
proud, to summon up an actual person, substantial and well known. It was
more easy and simple, more possible, to fill that fancy with an image
that had no actual embodiment, and to call to her side the being who was
nothing more than a recollection, whose very name and everything about
him was unknown to her. She accepted him as a symbol of all that a
dreaming girl desires in a companion. He was a dream; there need be no
bounds to the enthusiasm, the poetry, the fine imagination, with which
she endowed him, any more than there need be to the devotion to
herself, which was a mere dream also. He might woo her as men only woo
in the imagination of girls, so delicately, so tenderly, with such
ethereal worship. How different the most glorious road would be were he
beside her! though in reality he was beside her all the way, saying
things which were finer than anything but fancy, breathing the very soul
of rapture into her being. The others knew nothing of all this; how
should they? And Mrs. Lennox, for one, sometimes asked herself whether
Rosalind was really enjoying her travels. “She says so little,” that
great authority said.
There was, however, little danger that she should forget one, at least,
of her actual lovers. In the meantime a great deal had been going on in
the world, and especially in that distant part of it to which Rivers had
gone. The little war which he had gone to report had turned into a most
exciting and alarming one; and there had been days in which the whole
world, so to speak--all England at least, and her dependencies--had hung
upon his utterance, and looked for his communications every morning
almost before they looked at those which came from their nearest and
dearest. And it was said that he had excelled himself in these
communications. He had done things which were heroic, if not to hasten
the conclusion of the war, to make it successful, yet at least to convey
the earliest intelligence of any new action, and to make people at home
feel as if they were present upon the very field, spectators of all the
movements there.
This service involved him in as much danger as if he had been in the
very front of the fighting; and, indeed, he was known to have done
feats, for what is called the advantage of the public, to which the
stand made by a mere soldier, even in the most urgent circumstances, was
not to be compared. All this was extremely interesting, not to say
exciting, to his friends. Mrs. Lennox had the paper sent after her
wherever she travelled; and, indeed, it was great part of her day’s
occupation to read it, which she did with devotion. “The correspondent
is a friend of ours,” she said to the other English people in the
hotels. “We know him, I may say, very well, and naturally I take a great
interest.” The importance of his position as the author of those letters
which interested everybody, and even the familiar way in which he talked
of generals and commanders-in-chief, impressed her profoundly. As for
Rosalind, she said nothing, but she, too, read all about the war with an
attention which was breathless, not quite sure in her mind that it was
not under a general’s helmet that those crisp locks of gray were
curling, or that the vivid eyes which had looked into hers with such
expression were not those of the hero of the campaign. It did not seem
possible, somehow, that he could be less than a general. She took the
paper to her room in the evening, when Aunt Sophy had done with it, and
read and read. The charm was upon her that moved Desdemona, and it was
difficult to remember that the teller of the tale was not the chief
mover in it. How could she help but follow him in his wanderings
wherever he went? It was the least thing she could do in return for what
he had given to her--for that passion which had made her tremble--which
she wondered at and admired as if it had been poetry. All this
captivated the girl’s fancy in spite of herself, and gave her an
extraordinary interest in everything he said, and that was said of him.
But, notwithstanding, it was not Mr. Rivers who accompanied her in the
spirit on all the journeys she made, and to all the beautiful places
which filled her with rapture. Not Mr. Rivers--a visionary person, one
whose very name was to her unknown.