When John Trevanion questioned Everard, as already recorded, the young
man, though greatly disconcerted, had made him a very unexpected reply.
He had the boldness to say what was so near the truth that there was all
the assurance of conviction in his tone; and John, on his side, was
confounded. Everard had declared to him that there was a family
connection, a relationship, between himself and Mr. Trevanion, though,
on being more closely questioned, he declined to explain how it was;
that is, he postponed the explanation, saying that he could only make
the matter clear by reference to another relation, who could give him
the exact information. It was a bold thought, conceived at the moment,
and carried through with the daring of desperation. He felt, before it
was half said, that John Trevanion was impressed by the reality in his
tone, and that if he dared further, and told all his tale, the position
of affairs might be changed. But Rosalind’s reply to the sudden
declaration which in his boldness he had made, and to his vague,
ill-advised promises to reward her if she would listen to him, had
driven for some days everything out of his mind; and when he met Roland
Hamerton he was but beginning to recall his courage, and to say to
himself that there was still something which might be done, and that
things were not perhaps so hopeless as they seemed. From that brief
interview he went away full of a sudden resolution. If, after all, this
card was the one to play, did not he hold it in his hand? If it were by
means of the lost mother that Rosalind was to be won, it was by the same
means alone that he could prove to John Trevanion, all he had promised
to prove, and thus set himself right with Rosalind’s guardian. Thoughts
crowded fast upon him as he turned away, instinctively making a round to
escape Hamerton’s scrutiny. This led him back at length to the precincts
of the hotel, where he plunged among the shrubbery, passing round behind
the house, and entered by a small door which was almost hid by a clump
of laurels. A short stair led from this to a small, entirely secluded
apartment separated from the other part of the hotel. The room which
young Everard entered with a sort of authoritative familiarity was well
lighted with three large windows opening upon the garden, but seemed to
be a sort of receptacle for all the old furniture despised elsewhere. It
had but one occupant, who put down the book when Everard came in, and
looked up with a faint, inquiring smile. The reader does not need to be
told who was the banished woman who sat here, shut out and separated
from the external world. She had thought it wise, amid the risks of
travel, to call herself by the name he bore, and had been living here,
as everywhere, in complete retirement, before the arrival of the
Trevanions. The apartment which she occupied was cheap and quiet, one of
which recommendations was of weight with her in consequence of Edmund’s
expenses; the other for reasons of her own. She had changed greatly in
the course of these two years, not only by becoming very thin and worn,
but also from a kind of moral exhaustion which had taken the place of
that personal power and dignity which were once the prevailing
expression of her face. She had borne much in the former part of her
life without having the life itself crushed out of her; but her complete
transference to a strange world, her absorption in one sole subject of
interest which presented nothing noble, nothing elevated, and, finally,
the existence of a perpetual petty conflict in which she was always the
loser, a struggle to make a small nature into a great one, or, rather,
to deal with the small nature as if it were a great one, to attribute to
it finer motives than it could even understand, and to appeal with
incessant failure to generosities which did not exist--this had taken
the strength out of Mrs. Trevanion. Her face had an air of exhausted and
hopeless effort. She saw the young man approaching with a smile, which,
though faint, was yet one of welcome. To be ready to receive him
whenever he should appear, to be always ready and on the watch for any
gleam of higher meaning, to be dull to no better impulse, but always
waiting for the good--that was the part she had to play. But she was no
longer impatient, no longer eager to thrust him into her own world, to
convey to him her own thoughts. That she knew was an endeavor without
hope. And, as a matter of fact, she had little hope in anything. She had
done all that she knew how to do. If anything further were possible she
was unaware what it was; and her face, like her heart, was worn out. Yet
she looked up with what was not unlike a cheerful expectation. “Well,
Edmund?” she said.
He threw down his hat on the table, giving emphasis to what he said.
“I have brought you some news. I don’t know if you will like it or not,
or if it will be a surprise. The Trevanions are after you.”
The smile faded away from her face, but seemed to linger pathetically in
her eyes as she looked at him and repeated, “After me!” with a start.
“Yes. Of course all those visits and apparitions couldn’t be without
effect. You must have known that; and you can’t say I did not warn you.
They are moving heaven and earth--”
“How can they do that?” she asked; and then, “You reproach me justly,
Edmund; not so much as I reproach myself. I was made to do it, and
frighten--my poor children.”
“More than that,” he said, as if he took a pleasure in adding color to
the picture; “the little girl has gone all wrong in her head. She walks
in her sleep and says she is looking for her mother.”
The tears sprang to Mrs. Trevanion’s eyes. “Oh, Edmund!” she said, “you
wring my heart; and yet it is sweet! My little girl! she does not forget
me!”
“Children don’t forget,” he said gloomily. “I didn’t. I cried for you
often enough, but you never came to me.”
She gave him once more a piteous look, to which the tears in her eyes
added pathos. “Not--till it was too late,” she said.
“Not--till you were obliged; till you had no one else to go to,” said
he. “And you have not done very much for me since--nothing that you
could help. Look here! You can make up for that now, if you like;
there’s every opportunity now.”
“What is it, Edmund?” She relapsed into the chair, which supplied a
sort of framework on which mind and body seemed alike to rest.
Edmund drew a chair opposite to her, close to her, and threw himself
down in it. His hand raised to enhance his rhetoric was almost like the
threat of a blow.
“Look here,” he repeated; “I have told you before all I feel about
Rosalind!”
“And I have told you,” she said, with a faint, rising color, “that you
have no right to call her by that name. There is no sort of link between
Miss Trevanion and you.”
“She does not think so,” he answered, growing red. “She has always felt
there was a link, although she didn’t know what. There are two other
fellows after her now. I know that one of them, and I rather think both
of them, are hunting for you, by way of getting a hold on Rosalind. One
of them asked me just now if I wouldn’t help him. Me! And that woman
that was nurse at Highcourt, that began all the mischief, is here. So
you will be hunted out whatever you do. And John Trevanion is at me,
asking me what had I to do with his brother? I don’t know how he knows,
but he does know. I’ve told him there was a family connection, but that
I couldn’t say what till I had consulted--”
“You said _that_, Edmund? A--family connection!”
“Yes, I did. What else could I say? And isn’t it true? Now, here are two
things you can do: one would be kind, generous, all that I don’t expect
from you; the other would, at least, leave us to fight fair. Look here!
I believe they would be quite glad. It would be a way of smoothing up
everything and stopping all sorts of scandal. Come up there with me
straight and tell them who I am; and tell Rosalind that you want her to
cast off the others and marry me. She will do whatever you tell her.”
“Never, never, Edmund.” She had begun to shake her head, looking at him,
for some time before he would permit her voice to be heard. “Oh, ask me
anything but that!”
“Anything but the only thing,” he said; “that is like you; that is
always the way. Can’t you see it would be a way of smoothing over
everything? It would free Rosalind--it would free them all; if she were
my--”
She put out her hand to stop him. “No, Edmund, you must not say it. I
cannot permit it. That cannot be. You do not understand her, nor she
you. I can never permit it, even if--even if--”
“Even if--? You mean to say if she were--fond of me--”
Mrs. Trevanion uttered a low cry. “Edmund, I will rather go and tell
her, what I have told you--that you could never understand each
other--that you are different, wholly different--that nothing of the
kind could be--”
He glared at her with a fierce rage, by which she was no longer
frightened, which she had seen before, but which produced in her
overwrought mind a flutter of the old, sickening misery which had fallen
into so hopeless a calm. “That is what you will do for me--when affairs
come to an issue!--that is all after everything you have promised,
everything you have said--that is all; but I might have known--”
She made no reply. She was so subdued in her nature by all the hopeless
struggles of the past that she did not say a word in self-defence.
“Then,” he said, rising up from his chair, throwing out his hands as
though putting her out of her place, “go! That’s the only other thing
you can do for me. Get out of this. Why stay till they come and drag you
out to the light and expose you--and me? If you won’t do the one thing
for me, do the other, and make no more mischief, for the love of
heaven--if you care for heaven or for love either,” he added, making a
stride towards the table and seizing his hat again. He did not, however,
rush away then, as seemed his first intention, but stood for a moment
irresolute, not looking at her, holding his hat in his hand.
“Edmund,” she said, “you are always sorry afterwards when you say such
things to me.”
“No,” he said, “I’m not sorry--don’t flatter yourself-- I mean every word
I say. You’ve been my worst enemy all my life. And since you’ve been
with me it’s been worst of all. You’ve made me your slave; you’ve
pretended to make a gentleman of me, and you’ve made me a slave. I have
never had my own way or my fling, but had to drag about with you. And
now, when you really could do me good--when you could help me to marry
the girl I like, and reform, and everything, you won’t. You tell me
point-blank you won’t. You say you’ll rather ruin me than help me. Do
you call that the sort of a thing a man has a right to expect--after all
I have suffered in the past?”
“Edmund, I have always told you that Miss Trevanion--”
“Rosalind!” he said. “Whatever you choose to call her, I shall call her
by her name. I have been everything with them till now, when this friend
of yours, this Uncle John, has come. And you can put it all right with
him, if you please, in a moment, and make my way clear. And now you say
you won’t! Oh, yes, I know you well enough. Let all those little things
go crazy and everybody be put out, rather than lend a real helping hand
to me--”
“Edmund!” she called to him, holding out her hands as he rushed to the
door; but he felt he had got a little advantage and would not risk the
loss of it again. He turned round for a moment and addressed her with a
sort of solemnity.
“To-morrow!” he said. “I’ll give you till to-morrow to think it over,
and then-- I’ll do for myself whatever I find it best to do.”
For a minute or two after the closing of the door, which was noisy and
sharp, there was no further movement in the dim room. Mrs. Trevanion sat
motionless, even from thought. The framework of the chair supported her,
held her up, but for the moment, as it seemed to her, nothing else in
earth and heaven. She sat entirely silent, passive, as she had done so
often during these years, all her former habits of mind arrested. Once
she had been a woman of energy, to whom a defeat or discouragement was
but a new beginning, whose resources were manifold; but all these had
been exhausted. She sat in the torpor of that hopelessness which had
become habitual to her, life failing and everything in life. As she sat
thus an inner door opened, and another figure, which had grown strangely
like her own in the close and continual intercourse between them, came
in softly. Jane was noiseless as her mistress, almost as worn as her
mistress, moving like a shadow across the room. Her presence made a
change in the motionless atmosphere. Madam was no longer alone; and with
the softening touch of that devotion which had accompanied all her
wanderings for so great a portion of her life, there arose in her a
certain re-awakening, a faint flowing of the old vitality. There were,
indeed, many reasons why the ice should be broken and the stream resume
its flowing. She raised herself a little in her chair, and then she
spoke. “Jane,” she said; “Jane, I have news of the children--”
“God bless them,” said Jane. She put the books down out of her hands,
which she had been pretending to arrange, and turned her face towards
her mistress, who said “Amen!” with a sudden gleam and lighting-up of
her pale face like the sky after a storm.
“I have done very wrong,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “there is never
self-indulgence in the world but some one suffers for it. Jane, my
little Amy is ill. She dreams about her poor mother. She has taken to
walking in her sleep.”
“Well, Madam, that’s no great harm. I have heard of many children who
did--”
“But not through--oh, such selfish folly as mine! I have grown so weak,
such a fool! And they have sent for Russell, and Russell is here. You
may meet her any day--”
“Russell!” Jane said, with an air of dismay, clasping her hands; “then,
Madam, you must make up your mind what you will do, for Russell is not
one to be balked. She will find us out.”
“Why should I fear to be found out?” said Mrs. Trevanion, with a faint
smile. “No one now can harm me. Jane, everything has been done that can
be done to us. I do not fear Russell or any one. And sometimes it seems
to me that I have been wrong all along. I think now I have made up my
mind--”
“To what? oh, to what, Madam?” Jane cried.
“I am not well,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “I am only a shadow of myself. I
am not at all sure but perhaps I may be going to die. No, no-- I have no
presentiments, Jane. It is only people who want to live who have
presentiments, and life has few charms for me. But look at me; you can
see through my hands almost. I am dreadfully tired coming up those
stairs. I should not be surprised if I were to die.”
She said this apologetically, as if she were putting forth a plea to
which perhaps objections might be made.
“You have come through a deal, Madam,” said Jane, with the
matter-of-fact tone of her class. “It is no wonder if you are thin; you
have had a great deal of anxiety. But trouble doesn’t kill.”
“Sometimes,” said her mistress, with a smile, “in the long run. But I
don’t say I am sure. Only, if that were so--there would be no need to
deny myself.”
“You will send for the children and Miss Rosalind.” Jane clasped her
hands with a cry of anticipation in which her whole heart went forth.
“That would be worth dying for,” said Madam, “to have them all peaceably
for perhaps a day or two. Ah! but I would need to be very bad before we
could do that; and I am not ill, not that I know. I have thought of
something else, Jane. It appears that they have found out, or think they
have found out, that I am here. I cannot just steal away again as I did
before. I will go to them and see them all. Ah, don’t look so pleased;
that probably means that we shall have to leave afterwards at once.
Unless things were to happen so well, you know,” she said, with a smile,
“as that I should just really--die there; which would be ideal--but
therefore not to be hoped for.”
“Oh, Madam,” said Jane, with a sob, “you don’t think, when you say
that--”
“Of you, my old friend? But I do. You would be glad to think, after a
while, that I had got over it all. And what could happen better to me
than that I should die among my own? I am of little use to Edmund--far
less than I hoped. Perhaps I had no right to hope. One cannot give up
one’s duties for years, and then take them back again. God forgive me
for leaving him, and him for all the faults that better training might
have saved him from. All the tragedy began in that, and ends in that. I
did wrong, and the issue is--this.”
“So long ago, Madam--so long ago. And it all seemed so simple.”
“To give up my child for his good, and then to be forced to give up my
other children, not for their good or mine? I sometimes wonder how it
was that I never told John Trevanion, who was always my friend. Why did
I leave Highcourt so, without a word to any one? It all seems confused
now, as if I might have done better. I might have cleared myself, at
least; I might have told them. I should like to give myself one great
indulgence, Jane, before I die.”
“Madam!” Jane cried, with a panic which her words belied, “I am sure
that it is only fancy; you are not going to die.”
“Perhaps,” said her mistress; “I am not sure at all. I told you so; but
only I should not be surprised. Whether it is death or whether it is
life, something new is coming. We must be ghosts no longer; we must come
back to our real selves, you and I, Jane. We will not let ourselves be
hunted down, but come out in the eye of day. It would be strange if
Russell had the power to frighten me. And did I tell you that Reginald
is here, too, and young Roland Hamerton, who was at Highcourt that
night? They are all gathered together again for the end of the tragedy,
Jane.”
“Oh, Madam,” cried Jane, “perhaps for setting it all right.”
Her mistress smiled somewhat dreamily. “I do not see how that can be.
And, even if it were so, it will not change the state of affairs. But we
are not going to allow ourselves to be found out by Russell,” she added,
with a curious sense of the ludicrous. The occasion was not gay, and yet
there was something natural, almost a sound of amusement, in the laugh
with which she spoke. Jane looked at her wistfully, shaking her head.
“When I think of all that you have gone through, and that you can laugh
still!--but perhaps it is better than crying,” Jane said.
Mrs. Trevanion nodded her head in assent, and there was silence in the
dim room where these two women spent their lives. It gave her a certain
pleasure to see Jane moving about. There was a sort of lull of painful
sensation, a calm, and disinclination for any exertion on her own part;
a mood in which it was grateful to see another entirely occupied with
her wants; anxious only to invent more wants for her, and means of doing
her service. In the languor of this quiet it was not wonderful that Mrs.
Trevanion should feel her life ebbing away. She began to look forward to
the end of the tragedy with a pleased acquiescence. She had yielded to
her fate at first, understanding it to be hopeless to strive against it;
with, perhaps, a recoil from actual contact with the scandal and the
shame which was as much pride as submission; but at that time her
strength was not abated, nor any habit of living lost. Now that period
of anguish seemed far off, and she judged herself and her actions not
without a great pity and understanding, but yet not without some
disapproval. She thought over it all as she sat lying back in the great
chair, with Jane moving softly about. She would not repeat the decisive
and hasty step she had once taken. She could not now, alas, believe in
the atonement which she then thought might still be practicable in
respect to the son whom she had given up in his childhood; nor did she
think that it was well, as she had done then, to abandon everything
without a word--to leave her reputation at the mercy of every
evil-speaker. To say nothing for herself, to leave her dead husband’s
memory unassailed by any defence she could put forth, and to cut short
the anguish of parting, for her children as well as for herself, had
then seemed to her the best. And she had fondly thought, with what she
now called vanity and the delusion of self-regard, that, by devoting
herself to him who was the cause of all her troubles, she might make up
for the evils which her desertion of him had inflicted. These were
mistakes, she recognized now, and must not be repeated. “I was a fool,”
she said to herself softly, with a realization of the misery of the past
which was acute, yet dim, as if the sufferer had been another person.
Jane paused at the sound of her voice, and came towards her--“Madam, did
you speak?”
“No, except to myself. My faithful Jane, you have suffered everything
with me. We are not going to hide ourselves any longer,” she replied.