Thus Mrs. Trevanion went away out of reach and knowledge of everything
that belonged to her old life. She had not been very happy in that life.
The principal actor in it, her husband, had regarded her comfort less
than that of his horses or hounds. He had filled her existence with
agitations, but yet had not made life unbearable until the last fatal
complications had arisen. She had been surrounded by people who
understood her more or less, who esteemed and approved her, and she had
possessed in Rosalind the sweetest of companions, one who was in
sympathy with every thought, who understood almost before she was
conscious of thinking at all; a creature who was herself yet not
herself, capable of sharing everything and responding at every point.
And, except her husband, there was no one who regarded Madam Trevanion
with anything but respect and reverence. No one mistook the elevation of
her character. She was regarded with honor wherever she went, her
opinions prized, her judgment much considered. When a woman to whom this
position has been given suddenly descends to find herself in the sole
company of one who cares nothing for her judgment, to whom all her
opinions are antiquated or absurd, and herself one of those conventional
female types without logic or reason, which are all that some men know
of women, the confusing effect which is produced upon earth and heaven
is too wonderful for words. More than any change of events, this change
of position confuses and overwhelms the mind. Sometimes it is the dismal
result of an ill-considered marriage. Sometimes it appears in other
relationships. She was pulled rudely down from the pedestal she had
occupied so long, and rudely, suddenly, made to feel that she was no
oracle, that her words had no weight because she said them, but rather
carried with them a probability of foolishness because they were hers.
The wonder of this bewildered at first; it confused her consciousness,
and made her insecure of herself. And at last it produced the worse
effect of making everything uncertain to her. Though she had been
supposed so self-sustained and strong in character, she was too natural
a woman not to be deeply dependent upon sympathy and the support of
understanding. When these failed she tottered and found no firm footing
anywhere. Perhaps she said to herself she was really foolish, as Edmund
thought, unreasonable, slow to comprehend all character that was unlike
her own. She was no longer young; perhaps the young were wiser, had
stronger lights; perhaps her beliefs, her prejudices, were things of the
past. All this she came to think with wondering pain when the support of
general faith and sympathy was withdrawn. It made her doubtful of
everything she had done or believed, timid to speak, watching the
countenance of the young man whose attitude towards her had changed all
the world to her. This was not part of the great calamity that had
befallen her. It was something additional, another blow; to be parted
from her children, to sustain the loss of all things dear to her, was
her terrible fate, a kind of vengeance for what was past; but that her
self-respect, her confidence, should thus be taken away from her was
another distinct and severe calamity. Sometimes the result was a mental
giddiness, a quiver about her of the atmosphere and all the solid
surroundings, as though there was (but in a manner unthought of by
Berkeley) nothing really existent but only in the thoughts of those who
beheld it. Perhaps her previous experiences had led her towards this;
for such had been the scope of all her husband’s addresses to her for
many a day. But she had not been utterly alone with him, she had felt
the strong support of other people’s faith and approval holding her up
and giving her strength. Now all these accessories had failed her. Her
world consisted of one soul, which had no faith in her; and thus, turned
back upon herself, she faltered in all her moral certainties, and began
to doubt whether she had ever been right, whether she had any power to
judge, or perception, or even feeling, whether she were not perhaps in
reality the conventional woman, foolish, inconsistent, pertinacious,
which she appeared through Edmund’s eyes.
The other strange, new sensations that Madam encountered in these years,
while her little children throve and grew under the care of Mrs. Lennox,
and Rosalind developed into the full bloom of early womanhood, were many
and various. She had thought herself very well acquainted with the
mysteries of human endurance, but it seemed to her now that at the
beginning of that new life she had known nothing of them. New depths and
heights developed every day; her own complete breaking down and the
withdrawal from her of confidence in herself being the great central
fact of all. On Edmund’s side the development too was great. He had
looked and wished for pleasure and ease and self-indulgence when he had
very little power of securing them. When by a change of fortune so
extraordinary and unexpected he actually obtained the means of
gratifying his instincts, he addressed himself to the task with a unity
of purpose which was worthy of a greater aim. He was drawn aside from
his end by no glimmer of ambition, no impulse to make something better
out of his life. His imperfect education and ignorance of what was best
in existence had perhaps something to do with this. To him, as to many a
laboring man, the power of doing no work, nor anything but what he
pleased, seemed the most supreme of gratifications. He would not give
himself the trouble to study anything, even the world, confident as only
the ignorant are in the power of money, and in that great evidence that
he had become one of the privileged classes, the fact that he did not
now need to do anything for his living. He was not absolutely bad or
cruel; he only preferred his own pleasure to anybody else’s, and was a
little contemptuous of a woman’s advice and intolerant of her rule and
impatient of her company. Perhaps her idea that she owed herself to him,
that it was paying an old debt of long-postponed duty to devote herself
to him now, to do her best for him, to give him everything in her power
that could make him happy, was a mistaken one from the beginning. She
got to believe that she was selfish in remaining with him, while still
feeling that her presence was the only possible curb upon him. How was
she to find a way of serving him best, of providing for all his wants
and wishes, of keeping him within the bounds of possibility, yet letting
him be free from the constraint of her presence? As time went on, this
problem became more and more urgent, yet by the same progress of time
her mind grew less and less clear on any point. The balance of the
comparative became more difficult to carry. There was no absolute good
within her reach, and she would not allow even to herself that there was
any absolute bad in the young man’s selfish life. It was all
comparative, as life was. But to find the point of comparative advantage
which should be best for him, where he should be free without being
abandoned, and have the power of shaping his course as he pleased
without the power of ruining himself and her--this became more and more
the engrossing subject of her thoughts.
As for Edmund, though he indulged in many complaints and grumbles as to
having always a woman at his heels, his impatience never went the length
of emancipating himself. On the whole, his indolent nature found it most
agreeable to have everything done for him, to have no occasion for
thought. He had the power always of complaint, which gave him a kind of
supremacy without responsibility. His fixed grievance was that he was
kept out of London; his hope, varying as they went and came about the
world, that somewhere they would meet the family from which Mrs.
Trevanion had been torn, and that “on the sly,” or otherwise (though he
never repeated those unlucky words), he might find himself in a
position to approach Rosalind. In the meantime he amused himself in such
ways as were practicable, and spent a great deal of money, and got a
certain amount of pleasure out of his life. His health was not robust,
and when late hours and amusements told upon him he had the most devoted
of nurses. On the whole, upon comparison with the life of a clerk on a
small salary in a Liverpool office, his present existence was a sort of
shabby Paradise.
About the time when Rosalind heard from Mr. Rivers of that chance
encounter which revived all her longings for her mother, and at the same
time all the horror of vague and miserable suspicion which surrounded
Mrs. Trevanion’s name, a kind of crisis had occurred in this strange,
wandering life. Edmund had fallen ill, more seriously than before, and
in the quiet of convalescence after severe suffering had felt certain
compunctions cross his mind. He had acknowledged to his tender nurse
that she was very kind to him. “If you would not nag a fellow so,” he
said, “and drive me about so that I don’t know what I am doing, I think,
now that I am used to your ways, we might get on.”
Mrs. Trevanion did not defend herself against the charge of “nagging” or
“driving” as she might perhaps have done at an earlier period, but
accepted with almost grateful humility the condescension of this
acknowledgment. “In the meantime,” she said, “you must get well, and
then, please God, everything will be better.”
“If you like to make it so,” he said, already half repentant of the
admission he had made. And then he added, “If you’d only give up this
fancy of yours for foreign parts. Why shouldn’t we go home? You may like
it, you speak the language, and so forth: but I detest it. If you want
to please me and make me get well, let’s go home.”
“We have no home to go to, Edmund--”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, you know. You don’t suppose I mean the sort of
fireside business. Nothing is so easy as to get a house in London; and
you know that is what I like best.”
“Edmund, how could I live in a house in London?” she said. “You must
remember that a great deal has passed that is very painful. I could not
but be brought in contact with people who used to know me--”
“Ah!” he cried, “here’s the real reason at last. I thought all this time
it was out of consideration for me, to keep me out of temptation, and
that sort of thing; but now it crops up at last. It’s for yourself,
after all. It is always an advance to know the true reason. And what
could they do to you, those people with whom you might be brought in
contact?”
She would not perhaps have said anything about herself had he not
beguiled her by the momentary softness of his tone. And now one of those
rapid scintillations of cross light which were continually gleaming upon
her life and motives flashed over her and changed everything. To be
sure! it was selfishness, no doubt, though she had not seen it so. She
answered, faltering a little: “They could do nothing to me. Perhaps you
are right, Edmund. It may be that I have been thinking too much of
myself. But I am sure London would not be good for you. To live there
with comfort you must have something to do, or you must have--friends--”
“Well!” he said, with a kind of defiance.
“You have no friends, Edmund.”
“Well,” he repeated, “whose fault is that? It is true that I have no
friends; but I could have friends and everything else if you would take
a little trouble--more than friends; I might marry and settle. You could
do everything for me in that way if you would take the trouble. That’s
what I want to do; but I suppose you would rather drag me forever about
with you than see me happy in a place of my own.”
Mrs. Trevanion had lost her beauty. She was pale and worn as if twenty
additional years had passed over her head instead of two. But for a
moment the sudden flush that warmed and lighted up her countenance
restored to her something of her prime. “I think,” she said, “Edmund, if
you will let me for a moment believe what I am saying, that, to see you
happy and prosperous, I would gladly die. I know you will say my dying
would be little to the purpose; but the other I cannot do for you. To
marry requires a great deal that you do not think of. I don’t say love,
in the first place--”
“You may if you please,” he said. “I’m awfully fond of-- Oh, I don’t mind
saying her name. You know who I mean. If you were good enough for her, I
don’t see why I shouldn’t be good enough for her. You have only got to
introduce me, which you can if you like, and all the rest I take in my
own hands.”
“I was saying,” she repeated, “that love, even if love exists, is not
all. Before any girl of a certain position would be allowed to marry,
the man must satisfy her friends. His past, and his future, and the
means he has, and how he intends to live--all these things have to be
taken into account. It is not so easy as you think.”
“That is all very well,” said Edmund; though he paused with a stare of
mounting dismay in his beautiful eyes, larger and more liquid than ever
by reason of his illness--those eyes which haunted Rosalind’s
imagination. “That is all very well: but it is not as if you were a
stranger: when they know who I am--when I have you to answer for me--”
A flicker of self-assertion came into her eyes. “Why do you think they
should care for me or my recommendation? You do not,” she said.
He laughed. “That’s quite different. Perhaps they know more--and I am
sure they know less--than I do. I should think you would like them to
know about me for your own sake.”
She turned away with once more a rapid flush restoring momentary youth
to her countenance. She was so changed that it seemed to her, as she
caught a glimpse of herself, languidly moving across the room, in the
large, dim mirror opposite, that no one who belonged to her former
existence would now recognize her. And there was truth in what he said.
It would be better for her, for her own sake, that the family from whom
she was separated should know everything there was to tell. After the
first horror lest they should know, there had come a revulsion of
feeling, and she had consented in her mind that to inform them of
everything would be the best, though she still shrank from it. But even
if she had strength to make that supreme effort it could do her no good.
Nothing, they had said, no explanation, no clearing up, would ever
remove the ban under which she lay. And it would be better to go down to
her grave unjustified than to place Rosalind in danger. She looked back
upon the convalescent as he resumed fretfully the book which was for the
moment his only way of amusing himself. Illness had cleared away from
Edmund’s face all the traces of self-indulgence which she had seen
there. It was a beautiful face, full of apparent meaning and sentiment,
the eyes full of tenderness and passion--or at least what might seem so
in other lights, and to spectators less dismally enlightened than
herself. A young soul like Rosalind, full of faith and enthusiasm, might
take that face for the face of a hero, a poet. Ah! this was a cruel
thought that came to her against her will, that stabbed her like a knife
as it came. She said to herself tremulously that in other circumstances,
with other people, he might have been, might even be, all that his face
told. Only with her from the beginning everything had gone wrong--which
again, in some subtile way, according to those revenges which everything
that is evil brings with it, was her fault and not his. But Rosalind
must not be led to put her faith upon promises which were all
unfulfilled. Rosalind must not run any such risk. Whatever should
happen, she could not expose to so great a danger another woman, and
that her own child.
But there were other means of setting the wheels of fate in motion, with
which Madame Trevanion had nothing to do.