He was placed between the ladies at the _table d’hôte_. Mrs. Lennox, on
her side, told the story of what had happened to the lady on her other
side, and Rosalind was appealed to by her left-hand neighbor to know
what was the truth of the rumor which had begun to float about the
little community. It was reported all down the table, so far, at least,
as the English group extended, “That is the gentleman next to Mrs.
Lennox--the children were drowning, and he plunged in and saved both.”
“What carelessness to let them go so near the water! It is easy to see,
poor things, that they have no mother.” “And did he save them both? Of
course, they must both be safe or Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion would
not have appeared at the _table d’hôte_.” Such remarks as these,
interspersed with questions, “Who is the young fellow?--where has he
sprung from? I never saw him before,” buzzed all about as dinner went
on. Mr. Everard was presented by Mrs. Lennox, in her gratitude, to the
lady next to her, who was rather a great lady, and put up her glass to
look at him. He was introduced to the gentleman on Rosalind’s other hand
by that gentleman’s request. Thus he made his appearance in society at
Aix with greatest _éclat_. When they rose from the table he followed
Rosalind out of doors into the soft autumnal night. The little veranda
and the garden walks under the trees were full of people, under cover of
whose noisy conversation there was abundant opportunity for a more
interesting _tête-à-tête_. “You are too kind,” he said, “in telling this
little story. Indeed, there was nothing to make any commotion about. You
could almost have done it, without any help from me.”
“No,” she said. “I could not have done it; I should have tried and
perhaps been drowned, too. But it is not I who have talked, it is Aunt
Sophy. She is very grateful to you.”
“She has no occasion,” he said. “Whatever I could do for you, Miss
Trevanion--” and then he stopped, somewhat breathlessly. “It was
curious, was it not? that the boat on the pond should have been so much
the same thing, though everything else was so different. And that is
years ago.”
“Nearly two years.”
“Then you remember?” he said, in a tone of delighted surprise.
“I have much occasion to remember. It was at a very sad moment. I
remember everything that happened.”
“To be sure,” said the young man. “No, I did not forget. It was only
that in the pleasure of seeing you everything else went out of my mind.
But I have never forgotten, Miss Trevanion, all your anxiety. I saw you,
you may remember, the day you were leaving home.”
Rosalind raised her eyes to him with a look of pain. “It is not a happy
recollection,” she said.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind. I hope you will forgive me for recalling to you what
is so painful.”
“The sight of you recalls it,” she said; “it is not your fault, Mr.
Everard, you had relations near Highcourt.”
“Only one, but nobody now--nobody. It was a sort of chance that took me
there at all. I was in a little trouble, and then I left suddenly, as it
happened, the same day as you did, Miss Trevanion. How well I remember
it all! You were carrying the same little boy who was in the boat
to-day--was it the same?--and you would not let me help you. I almost
think if you had seen it was me you would not have allowed me to help
you to-day.”
“If I had seen it was--” Rosalind paused with troubled surprise.
Sometimes his fine voice and soft tones lulled her doubts altogether,
but, again, a sudden touch brought them all back. He was very quick,
however, to observe the changes in her, and changed with them with a
curious mixture of sympathy and servility.
“Circumstances have carried me far away since then,” he said; “but I
have always longed to know, to hear, something. If I could tell you the
questions I have asked myself as to what might be going on; and how many
times I have tried to get to England to find out!”
“We have never returned to Highcourt,” she said, confused by his efforts
to bring back those former meetings, and not knowing how to reply. “I
think we shall not till my brother comes of age. Yes, my little brother
was the same. He is very much excited about what happened to-day;
neither of them understood it at first, but now they begin to perceive
that it is a wonderful adventure. I hope the wetting will do you no
harm.”
“Please,” he said in a petulant tone, “if you do not want to vex me, say
no more of that. I am not such a weak creature; indeed, there is nothing
the matter with me, except in imagination.”
“I think,” said Rosalind, with a little involuntary laugh, “that the
baths of Aix are good for the imagination. It grows by what it feeds on;
though rheumatism does not seem to be an imaginative sort of malady.”
“You forget,” he cried, almost with resentment; “the danger of it is
that it affects the heart, which is not a thing to laugh at.”
“Oh, forgive me!” Rosalind cried. “I should not have spoken so lightly.
It was because you were so determined that nothing ailed you. And I hope
you are right. The lake was so beautiful to-day. It did not look as if
it could do harm.”
“You go there often? I saw you had been painting.”
“Making a very little, very bad, sketch, that was all. Mr. Everard, I
think I must go in. My aunt will want me.”
“May I come, too? How kind she is! I feared that being without
introduction, knowing nobody-- But Mrs. Lennox has been most generous,
receiving me without a question--and you, Miss Trevanion.”
“Did you expect me to stop you from saving the children till I had asked
who you were?” cried Rosalind, endeavoring to elude the seriousness with
which he always returned to the original subject. “It is a pretty manner
of introduction to do us the greatest service, the greatest kindness.”
“But it was nothing. I can assure you it was nothing,” he said. He liked
to be able to make this protestation. It was a sort of renewing of his
claim upon them. To have a right, the very strongest right, to their
gratitude, and yet to declare it was nothing--that was very pleasant to
the young man. And in a way it was true. He would have done anything
that it did not hurt him very much to do for Rosalind, even for her aunt
and her little brothers and sisters, but to feel that he was entitled to
their thanks and yet waived them was delightful to him. It was a
statement over and over again of his right to be with them. He
accompanied Rosalind to the room in which Aunt Sophy had established
herself, with mingled confidence and timidity, ingratiating himself by
every means that was possible, though he did not talk very much.
Indeed, he was not great in conversation at any time, and now he was so
anxious to please that he was nervous and doubtful what to say.
Mrs. Lennox received the young people with real pleasure. She liked, as
has been said in a previous part of this history, to have a young man
about, in general attendance, ready to go upon her errands and make
himself agreeable. It added to the ease and the gayety of life to have a
lover upon hand, one who was not too far gone, who still had eyes for
the other members of the party, and a serious intention of making
himself generally pleasant. She had never concealed her opinion that an
attendant of this description was an advantage. And Mrs. Lennox was
imprudent to the bottom of her heart. She had plenty of wise maxims in
store as to the necessity of keeping ineligible persons at a distance,
but it did not occur to her to imagine that a well-looking young
stranger attaching himself to her own party might be ineligible. Of
Arthur Rivers she had known that his family lived in an obscure street
in Clifton, which furnished her with objections at once. But of Mr.
Everard, who had saved the children’s lives, she had no doubts. She did,
indeed, mean to ask him if he belonged to the Everards of Essex, but in
the meantime was quite willing to take that for granted.
“It is so curious,” she said, making room for him to bring a chair
beside her, “that you and Rosalind should have met before, and how
fortunate for us! Oh, yes, Highcourt is a fine place. Of course we think
so, Rosalind and I, having both been born there. We think there is no
place in the world like it; but I have a right to feel myself impartial,
for I have been a good deal about; and there is no doubt it is a fine
place. Did you see over the house, Mr. Everard? Oh, no, of course it was
when my poor brother was ill. There were so many trying circumstances,”
she added, lowering her voice, “that we thought it best just to leave
it, you know, and the Elms does very well for the children as long as
they are children. Of course, when Reginald comes of age-- Do you know
the neighborhood of Clifton, Mr. Everard? Oh, you must come and see me
there. It is a capital hunting country, you know, and that is always an
inducement to a gentleman.”
“I should have no need of any inducement, if you are so kind.”
“It is you that have been kind,” Mrs, Lennox said. “I am sure if we can
do anything to make our house agreeable to you-- Now tell me how you get
on here. How often do you take the baths? Oh, I hope you are regular--so
much depends upon regularity, they tell me. Lady Blashfield, whom I was
talking to at dinner, tells me that if you miss one it is as bad as
giving up altogether. It is the continuity, she says. Young men are very
difficult to guide in respect to their health. My dear husband, that is,
Mr. Pulteney, my _first_ dear husband, whom I lost when we were both
quite young, might have been here now, poor dear fellow, if he had only
consented to be an invalid, and to use the remedies. You must let one
who has suffered so much say a word of warning to you, Mr. Everard. Use
the remedies, and youth will do almost everything for you. He might have
been here now--” Mrs. Lennox paused and applied her handkerchief to her
eyes.
Young Everard listened with the most devout attention, while Rosalind,
on her side, could not refrain from an involuntary reflection as to the
extreme inconvenience of Mr. Pulteney’s presence now. If that had been
all along possible, was not Aunt Sophy guilty of a kind of constructive
bigamy? To hear her dwelling upon this subject, and the stranger
listening with so much attention, gave Rosalind an insane desire to
laugh. Even Roland Hamerton, she thought, would have seen the humor of
the suggestion; but Everard was quite serious, lending an attentive ear.
He was very anxious to please. There was an absence of ease about him in
his anxiety. Not the ghost of a smile stole to his lips. He sat there
until Mrs. Lennox got tired, and remembered that the early hour at which
she began to bathe every morning made it expedient now to go to bed. He
was on the alert in a moment, offering his arm, and truly sympathetic
about the difficulty she expressed in rising from her chair. “I can get
on when once I am fairly started,” she said; “thank you so much, Mr.
Everard. Rosalind is very kind, but naturally in a gentleman’s arm there
is more support.”
“I am so glad that I can be of use,” he said fervently. And Rosalind
followed up-stairs, carrying Aunt Sophy’s work, half pleased, half
amused, a little disconcerted by the sudden friendship which had arisen
between them. She was, herself, in a very uncertain, somewhat excited
state of mind. The re-appearance of the stranger who had achieved for
himself, she could not tell how, a place in her dreams, disturbed the
calm in which she had been living, which in itself was a calm unnatural
at her age. Her heart beat with curious content, expectation, doubt, and
anxiety. He was not like the other men whom she had known. There was
something uncertain about him, a curiosity as to what he would do or
say, a suppressed alarm in her mind as to whether his doings and sayings
would be satisfactory. He might make some terrible mistake. He might say
something that would set in a moment a great gulf between him and her.
It was uncomfortable, and yet perhaps it had a certain fascination in
it. She never knew what was the next thing he might say or do. But Aunt
Sophy was loud in his praises when they reached their own apartment.
“What a thoroughly nice person!” she said. “What a modest, charming
young man! not like so many, laughing in their sleeve, in a hurry to get
away, taking no trouble about elder people. Mr. Everard has been
thoroughly well brought up, Rosalind; he must have had a nice mother.
That is always what I think when I see a young man with such good
manners. His mother must have been a nice woman. I am sure if he had
been my own nephew he could not have been more attentive to me.”
Rosalind said little in reply to this praise. She was pleased, and yet
an intrusive doubt would come in. To be a little original, not like all
the others, is not that an advantage? and yet-- She went to her own room,
thoughtful, yet with a sensation of novelty not without pleasure in her
mind, and paused, in passing, at the children’s door to pay them her
usual visit, and give them the kiss when they were asleep which their
mother was not near to give. This visit had a twofold meaning to
Rosalind. It was a visit of love to the little ones, that they might not
be deprived of any tenderness that she could give; and it was a sort of
pilgrimage of faithful devotion to the shrine which the mother had left
empty. A pang of longing for that mother, and of the wondering pain
which her name always called forth, was in her heart when she stooped
over the little beds. Ordinarily, everything was dim--the faint
night-light affording guidance to where they lay, and no more--and
still, with nothing but the soft breathing of the two children, one in
the outer and the other in the inner room. But to-night there was a
candle burning within and the sound of nurse’s voice soothing Johnny,
who, sitting up in his bed, was looking round him with eyes full of
light, and that large childish wakefulness which seems a sort of protest
against ever sleeping again.
“Oh, Miss Rosalind, I don’t know what to do with Master Johnny; he says
a lady came and looked at him. You’ve not been here, have you, miss? I
tell him there is no lady. He must just have dreamed it.”
“I didn’t dreamed it,” said Johnny. “It was a beautiful lady. She came
in _there_, and stood _here_. I want her to come again,” the child said,
gazing about him with his great eyes.
“But it is impossible, Miss Rosalind,” said the nurse; “the door is
locked, and there is no lady. He just must have been dreaming. He is a
little upset with the accident.”
“We wasn’t a bit upsetted,” said Johnny. “I could have doned it myself.
I wanted to tell the lady, Rosy, but she only said, ‘Go to sleep.’”
“That was the very wisest thing she could say. Go to sleep, and I will
sit by you,” said Rosalind.
It was some time, however, before Johnny accomplished the feat of going
to sleep. He was very talkative and anxious to fight his battles over
again, and explain exactly how he would have “doned” it. When the little
eyes closed at last, and all was still, Rosalind found the nurse waiting
in the outer room in some anxiety.
“Yes, Miss Rosalind, I am sure he was off his head a little--not to call
wandering, but just a little off his head. For how could any lady have
got into this room? It is just his imagination. I had once a little boy
before who was just the same, always seeing ladies and people whenever
he was the least excited. I will give him a dose in the morning, and if
he sees her again I would just send for the doctor. It is all physical,
miss, them sort of visions,” said the nurse, who was up to the science
of her time.