The moon was shining in full glory upon the lake, so brilliant and broad
that the great glittering expanse of water retained something like a
tinge of its natural blue in the wonderful splendor of the light. It was
not a night on which to keep in-doors. Mrs. Lennox, in the drawing-room,
after she had left her _protégé_ to the tender mercies of John, had been
a little hysterical, or, at least, as she allowed, very much “upset.” “I
don’t know what has come over John,” she said; “I think his heart is
turned to stone. Oh, Rosalind, how could you keep so still? You that
have such a feeling for the children, and saw the way that poor young
fellow was being bullied. It is a thing I will not put up with in my
house--if it can be said that this is my house. Yes, bullied. John has
never said a word to him! And I am sure he is going to make himself
disagreeable now, and when there is nobody to protect him--and he is so
good and quiet and takes it all so well,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a great
confusion of persons, “for our sakes.”
Rosalind did her best to soothe and calm her aunt’s excitement, and at
last succeeded in persuading her that she was very tired, and had much
better go to bed. “Oh, yes, I am very tired. What with my bath, and the
trouble of removing down here, and having to think of the dinners, and
all this trouble about Johnny and Amy, and your uncle that shows so
little feeling--of course, I am very tired. Most people would have been
in bed an hour ago. If you think you can remember my message to poor Mr.
Everard: to tell him never to mind John; that it is just his way and
nobody takes any notice of it; and say good-night to him for me. But you
know you have a very bad memory, Rosalind, and you will never tell him
the half of that.”
“If I see him, Aunt Sophy; but he may not come in here at all.”
“Oh, you may trust him to come in,” Aunt Sophy said; and with a renewed
charge not to forget, she finally rang for her maid, and went away, with
all her little properties, to bed. Rosalind did not await the interview
which Mrs. Lennox was so certain of. She stole out of the window, which
stood wide open like a door, into the moonlight. Everything was so still
that the movements of the leaves, as they rustled faintly, took
importance in the great quiet; and the dip of an oar into the water,
which took place at slow intervals, somewhere about the middle of the
lake, where some romantic visitors were out in the moonlight, was almost
a violent interruption. Rosalind stepped out into the soft night with a
sense of escape, not thinking much perhaps of the messages with which
she had been charged. The air was full of that faint but all-pervading
fragrance made up of odors, imperceptible in themselves, which belong to
the night, and the moon made everything sacred, spreading a white
beatitude even over the distant peaks of the hills. The girl, in her
great trouble and anxiety, felt soothed and stilled, without any reason,
by those ineffable ministrations of nature which are above all rule. She
avoided the gravel, which rang and jarred under her feet, and wandered
across the dry grass, which was burned brown with the heat, not like the
verdant English turf, towards the edge of the slope. She had enough to
think of, but, for the moment, in the hush of the night, did not think
at all, but gave herself over to the tranquillizing calm. Her cares went
from her for the time; the light and the night together went to her
heart. Sometimes this quiet will come unsought to those who are deeply
weighted with pain and anxiety; and Rosalind was very young; and when
all nature says it so unanimously, how is a young creature to
contradict, and say that all will not be well? Even the old and weary
will be deceived, and take that on the word of the kind skies and
hushed, believing earth. She strayed about among the great laurels and
daphnes, under the shadow of the trees, with her spirit calmed and
relieved from the pressure of troublous events and thoughts. She had
forgotten, in that momentary exaltation, that any interruption was
possible, and stood, clearly visible in the moonlight, looking out upon
the lake, when she heard the sound behind her of an uncertain step
coming out upon the veranda, then, crossing the gravel path, coming
towards her. She had not any thought of concealing herself, nor had she
time to do so, when Everard came up to her, breathless with haste, and
what seemed to be excitement. He said quickly, “You were not in the
drawing-room, and the window was open. I thought you would not mind if I
came after you.” Rosalind looked up at him somewhat coldly, for she had
forgotten he was there.
“I thought you had gone,” she said, turning half towards him, as
if--which was true--she did not mean to be disturbed. His presence had a
jarring effect, and broke the enchantment of the scene. He was always
instantly sensitive to any rebuff.
“I thought,” he repeated apologetically, “that you would not mind. You
have always made me feel so much--so much at home.”
These ill-chosen words roused Rosalind’s pride. “My aunt,” she said,
“has always been very glad to see you, Mr. Everard, and grateful to you
for what you have done for us.”
“Is that all?” he said hastily; “am I always to have those children
thrown in my teeth? I thought now, by this time, that you might have
cared for me a little for myself; I thought we had taken to each other,”
he added, with a mixture of irritation and pathos, with the
straightforward sentiment of a child; “for you know very well,” he
cried, after a pause, “that it is not for nothing I am always coming;
that it is not for the children, nor for your aunt, nor for anything but
you. You know that I think of nothing but you.”
The young man’s voice was hurried and tremulous with real feeling, and
the scene was one, above all others, in harmony with a love tale; and
Rosalind’s heart had been touched by many a soft illusion in respect to
the speaker, and had made him, before she knew him, the subject of many
a dream; but at this supreme moment a strange effect took place in her.
With a pang, acute as if it had been cut off by a blow, the mist of
illusion was suddenly severed, and floated away from her, leaving her
eyes cold and clear. A sensation of shame that she should ever have been
deceived, that she could have deceived him, ran hot through all her
being. “I think,” she said quickly, “Mr. Everard, that you are speaking
very wildly. I know nothing at all of why you come, of what you are
thinking.” Her tone was indignant, almost haughty, in spite of herself.
“Ah!” he cried, “I know what you think; you think that I am not as good
as you are, that I’m not a gentleman. Rosalind, if you knew who I was
you would not think that. I could tell you about somebody that you are
very, very fond of; ay! and make it easy for you to see her and be with
her as much as ever you pleased, if you would listen to me. If you only
knew, there are many, many things I could do for you. I could clear up a
great deal if I chose. I could tell you much you want to know if I
chose. I have been fighting off John Trevanion, but I would not fight
off you. If you will only promise me a reward for it; if you will let
your heart speak; if you will give me what I am longing for, Rosalind!”
He poured forth all this with such impassioned haste, stammering with
excitement and eagerness, that she could but partially understand the
sense, and not at all the extraordinary meaning and intention with which
he spoke. She stood with her face turned to him, angry, bewildered,
feeling that the attempt to catch the thread of something concealed and
all-important in what he said was more than her faculties were equal to;
and on the surface of her mind was the indignation and almost shame
which such an appeal, unjustified by any act of hers, awakens in a
sensitive girl. The sound of her own name from his lips seemed to strike
her as if he had thrown a stone at her. “Mr. Everard,” she cried,
scarcely knowing what words she used, “you have no right to call me
Rosalind. What is it you mean?”
“Ah!” he cried, with a laugh, “you ask me that! you want to have what I
can give, but give me nothing in return.”
“I think,” said Rosalind, quickly, “that you forget yourself, Mr.
Everard. A gentleman, if he has anything to tell, does not make
bargains. What is it, about some one, whom you say I love--” She began
to tremble very much, and put her hands together in an involuntary
prayer! “Oh, if it should be--Mr. Everard! I will thank you all my life
if you will tell me--”
“Promise me you will listen to me, Rosalind; promise me! I don’t want
your thanks; I want your--love. I have been after you for a long, long
time; oh, before anything happened. Promise me--”
He put out his hands to clasp hers, but this was more than she could
bear. She recoiled from him, with an unconscious revelation of her
distaste, almost horror, of these advances, which stung his self-esteem.
“You won’t!” he cried, hoarsely; “I am to give everything and get
nothing? Then I won’t neither, and that is enough for to-night--”
He had got on the gravel again, in his sudden, angry step backward, and
turned on his heel, crushing the pebbles with a sound that seemed to jar
through all the atmosphere. After he had gone a few steps he paused, as
if expecting to be called back. But Rosalind’s heart was all aflame. She
said to herself, indignantly, that to believe such a man had anything to
tell her was folly, was a shame to think of, was impossible. To chaffer
and bargain with him, to promise him anything--her love, oh Heaven! how
dared he ask it?--was intolerable. She turned away with hot, feminine
impulse, and a step in which there was no pause or wavering; increasing
the distance between them at a very different rate from that achieved by
his lingering steps. It seemed that he expected to be recalled after she
had disappeared altogether and hidden herself, panting, among the
shadows; for she could still hear his step pause with that jar and harsh
noise upon the gravel for what seemed to her, in her excitement, an hour
of suspense. And Rosalind’s heart jarred, as did all the echoes. Harsh
vibrations of pain went through and through it. The rending away of her
own self-illusion in respect to him, which was not unmingled with a
sense of guilt--for that illusion had been half voluntary, a fiction of
her own creating, a refuge of the imagination from other thoughts--and
at the same time a painful sense of his failure, and proof of the
floating doubt and fear which had always been in her mind on his
account, wounded and hurt her with almost a physical reality of pain.
And what was this suggestion, cast into the midst of this whirlpool of
agitated and troubled thought?--“I could tell you; I could make it easy
for you to see; I could clear up--” What? oh what, in the name of
Heaven! could he mean?
She did not know how long she remained pondering these questions,
making a circuitous round through the grounds, under the shadows, until
she got back again, gliding noiselessly to the veranda, from which she
could dart into the house at any return of her unwelcome suitor. But she
still stood there after all had relapsed into the perfect silence of
night in such a place. The tourists in the boat had rowed to the beach
and disembarked, and disappeared on their way home. The evening breeze
dropped altogether and ceased to move the trees, while she still stood
against the trellis-work scarcely visible in the gloom, wondering,
trying to think, trying to satisfy the questions that arose in her mind,
with a vague sense that if she but knew what young Everard meant, there
might be in it some guide, some clue to the mystery which weighed upon
her soul. But this was not all that Rosalind was to encounter. While she
stood thus gazing out from her with eyes that noted nothing, yet could
not but see, she was startled by something, a little wandering shadow,
not much more substantial than her dreams, which flitted across the
scene before her. Her heart leaped up with a pang of terror. What was
it? When the idea of the supernatural has once gained admission into the
mind the mental perceptions are often disabled in after-emergencies. Her
strength abandoned her. She covered her eyes with her hands, with a rush
of the blood to her head, a failing of all her powers. Something white
as the moonlight flitting across the moonlight, a movement, a break in
the stillness of nature. When she looked up again there was nothing to
be seen. Was there nothing to be seen? With a sick flutter of her heart,
searching the shadows round with keen eyes, she had just made sure that
there was nothing on the terrace, when a whiteness among the shrubs drew
her eyes farther down. Her nerves, which had played her false for a
moment, grew steady again, though her heart beat wildly. There came a
faint sound like a footstep, which reassured her a little. In such
circumstances sound is salvation. She herself was a sight to have
startled any beholder, as timidly, breathlessly, under the impulse of a
visionary terror, she came out, herself all white, into the whiteness
of the night. She called “Is there any one there?” in a very tremulous
voice. No answer came to her question; but she could now see clearly the
other moving speck of whiteness, gliding on under the dark trees,
emerging from the shadows, on to a little point of vision from which the
foliage had been cleared a little farther down. It stood there for a
moment, whiteness on whiteness, the very embodiment of a dream. A sudden
idea flashed into Rosalind’s mind, relieving her brain, and, without
pausing a moment, she hurried down the path, relieved from one fear only
to be seized by another. She reached the little ghost as it turned from
that platform to continue the descent. The whiteness of the light had
stolen the color out of the child’s hair. She was like a little statue
in alabaster, her bare feet, her long, half-curled locks, the folds of
her nightdress, all softened and rounded in the light. “Amy!” cried
Rosalind--but Amy did not notice her sister. Her face had the solemn
look of sleep, but her eyes were open. She went on unconscious, going
forward to some visionary end of her own from which no outward influence
could divert her. Rosalind’s terror was scarcely less great than when
she thought it an apparition. She followed, with her heart and her head
both throbbing, the unconscious little wanderer. Amy went down through
the trees and shrubs to the very edge of the lake, so close that
Rosalind behind hovered over her, ready at the next step to seize upon
her, her senses coming back, but her mind still confused, in her
perplexity not knowing what to do. Then there was for a moment a
breathless pause. Amy turned her head from side to side, as if looking
for some one; Rosalind seated herself on a stone to wait what should
ensue. It was a wonderful scene. The dark trees waved overhead, but the
moon, coming down in a flood of silver, lit up all the beach below. It
might have been an allegory of a mortal astray, with a guardian angel
standing close, watching, yet with no power to save. The water moving
softly with its ceaseless ripple, the soft yet chill air of night
rustling in the leaves, were the only things that broke the stillness.
The two human figures in the midst seemed almost without breath.
Rosalind did not know what to do. In the calm of peaceful life such
incidents are rare. She did not know whether she might not injure the
child by awaking her. But while she waited, anxious and trembling,
Nature solved the question for her. The little wavelets lapping the
stones came up with a little rush and sparkle in the light an inch or
two farther than before, and bathed Amy’s bare feet. The cold touch
broke the spell in a moment. The child started and sprang up with a
sudden cry. What might have happened to her had she woke to find herself
alone on the beach in the moonlight, Rosalind trembled to think. Her cry
rang along all the silent shore, a cry of distracted and bewildering
terror: “Oh, mamma! mamma! where are you?” then Amy, turning suddenly
round, flew, wild with fear, fortunately into her sister’s arms.
“Rosalind! is it Rosalind? And where is mamma? oh, take me to mamma. She
said she would be here.” It was all Rosalind could do to subdue and
control the child, who nearly suffocated her, clinging to her throat,
urging her on: “I want mamma--take me to mamma!” she cried, resisting
her sister’s attempts to lead her up the slope towards the house.
Rosalind’s strength was not equal to the struggle. After a while her own
longing burst forth. “Oh, if I knew where I could find her!” she said,
clasping the struggling child in her arms. Amy was subdued by Rosalind’s
tears. The little passion wore itself out. She looked round her,
shuddering in the whiteness of the moonlight. “Rosalind! are we all
dead, like mamma?” Amy said.
The penetrating sound of the child’s cry reached the house and far
beyond it, disturbing uneasy sleepers all along the edge of the lake. It
reached John Trevanion, who was seated by himself, chewing the cud of
fancy, bitter rather than sweet, and believing himself the only person
astir in the house. There is something in a child’s cry which touches
the hardest heart; and his heart was not hard. It did not occur to him
that it could proceed from any of the children of the house, but it was
too full of misery and pain to be neglected. He went out, hastily
opening the great window, and was, in his terror, almost paralyzed by
the sight of the two white figures among the trees, one leaning upon the
other. It was only after a momentary hesitation that he hurried towards
them, arriving just in time, when Rosalind’s strength was about giving
way, and carried Amy into the house. The entire household, disturbed,
came from all corners with lights and outcries. But Amy, when she had
been warmed and comforted, and laid in Rosalind’s bed, and recovered
from her sobbing, had no explanations to give. She had dreamed she was
going to mamma, that mamma was waiting for her down on the side of the
lake. “Oh, I want mamma, I want mamma!” the child cried, and would not
be comforted.