Madam was conveyed with the greatest care and tenderness to the best
room in the house, Mrs. Lennox’s own room, which it was a great
satisfaction to that kind soul to give up to her, making the little
sacrifice with joy.
“I have always thought what a nice room to be ill in--don’t you think it
is a nice room, Grace?--and to get better in, my dear. You can step into
the fresh air at once as soon as you are strong enough, and there is
plenty of room for us all to come and sit with you; and, please God,
we’ll soon have you well again and everything comfortable,” cried Mrs.
Lennox, her easy tears flowing softly, her easy words rolling out like
them. Madam accepted everything with soft thanks and smiles, and a quiet
ending seemed to fall quite naturally to the agitated day. Rosalind
spent the night by her mother’s bedside--the long, long night that
seemed as if it never would be done. When at last it was over, the
morning made everything more hopeful. A famous doctor, who happened to
be in the neighborhood, came with a humbler brother from Aix and
examined the patient, and said she had no disease--no disease--only no
wish or intention of living. Rosalind’s heart bounded at the first
words, but fell again at the end of the sentence, which these men of
science said very gravely. As for Mrs. Trevanion, she smiled at them
all, and made no complaint. All the day she lay there, sometimes lapsing
into that momentary death which she would not allow to be called a
faint, then coming back again, smiling, talking by intervals. The
children did not tire her, she said. Little Johnny, accustomed to the
thought that “the lady” was mamma, accepted it as quite simple, and,
returning to his usual occupations, drove a coach and four made of
chairs in her room, to her perfect satisfaction and his. The cracking
of his whip did not disturb her. Neither did Amy, who sat on her bed,
and forgot her troubles, and sang a sort of ditty, of which the burden
was “Mamma has come back.” Sophy, wandering long about the door of the
room, at last came in too, and standing at a distance, stared at her
mother with those sharp, restless eyes of hers, like one who was afraid
to be infected if she made too near an approach. And later in the
afternoon Reginald came suddenly in, shamefaced and gloomy, and came up
to the bed, and kissed her, almost without looking at her. At other
times, Mrs. Trevanion was left alone with her brother-in-law and
Rosalind, who understood her best, and talked to them with animation and
what seemed to be pleasure.
“Rosalind will not see,” she said with a smile, “that there comes a time
when dying is the most natural--the most easy way of settling
everything--the most pleasant for every one concerned.” There was no
solemnity in her voice, though now and then it broke, and there were
pauses for strength. She was the only one of the three who was cheerful
and at ease. “If I were so ill-advised as to live,” she added with a
faint laugh, “nothing could be changed. The past, you allow, has become
impossible, Rosalind; I could not go away again. That answered for once,
but not again.”
“You would be with me, mother, or I with you; for I am free, you know--I
am free now.”
Mrs. Trevanion shook her head. “John,” she said, “tell her; she is too
young to understand of herself. Tell her that this is the only way to
cut the knot--that it is the best way--the most pleasant--John, tell
her.”
He was standing by with his head bent upon his breast. He made a hasty
sign with his hand. He could not have spoken to save his own life, or
even hers. It was all intolerable, past bearing. He stood and listened,
with sometimes an outcry--sometimes, alas, a dreadful consent in his
heart to what she said, but he could not speak.
The conviction that now is the moment to die, that death is the most
natural, noble, even agreeable way of solving a great problem, and
making the path clear not only for the individual most closely
concerned, but for all around, is not unusual in life. Both in the
greater historical difficulties, and in those which belong to private
story, it appears often that this would be the better way. But the
conviction is not always sufficient to carry itself out. Sometimes it
will so happen that he or she in whose person the difficulty lies will
so prevail over flesh and blood, so exalt the logic of the situation, as
to attain this easy solution of the problem. But not in all cases does
it succeed. Madam proved to be one of those who fail. Though she had so
clearly made out what was expedient, and so fully consented to it, the
force of her fine organization was such that she was constrained to
live, and could not die.
And, what was more wonderful still, from the moment when she entered
Mrs. Lennox’s room at Bonport, the problem seemed to dissolve itself and
flee away in unsubstantial vapor-wreaths like a mist, as if it were no
problem at all. One of the earliest posts brought a black-edged letter
from England, announcing the death of Mr. Blake, the second executor of
Reginald Trevanion’s will, and John, with a start of half-incredulous
wonder, found himself the only responsible authority in the matter. It
had already been his determination to put it to the touch, to ascertain
whether such a will would stand, even with the chilling doubt upon his
mind that Mrs. Trevanion might not be able to explain the circumstances
which involved her in suspicion. But now suddenly, miraculously, it
became apparent to him that nothing need be done at all, no publicity
given, no scandal made. For who was there to take upon him the odious
office of reviving so odious an instrument? Who was to demand its
observance? Who interfere with the matter if it dropped into contempt?
The evil thing seemed to die and come to an end without any
intervention. Its conditions had become a manifest impossibility--to be
resisted to the death if need were; but there was no need: for had they
not in a moment become no more than a dead letter? Might not this have
been from the beginning, and all the misery spared? As John Trevanion
looked back upon it, asking himself this question, that terrible moment
in the past seemed to him like a feverish dream. No one of the actors in
it had preserved his or her self-command. The horror had been so great
that it had taken their faculties from them, and Madam’s sudden action,
of which the reasons were only now apparent, had cut the ground from
under the feet of the others, and forestalled all reasonable attempts to
bring something better out of it. She had not been without blame. Her
pride, too, had been in fault; her womanish haste, the precipitate
measures which had made any better solution impossible. But now all that
was over. Why should she die, now that everything had become clear?
The circumstances got revealed, to some extent, in Aix, among the
English visitors who remained, and even to the ordinary population in a
curious version, the point of the rumor being that the mysterious
English lady had died with the little somnambulist in her arms, who, it
was hoped for the sake of sensation, had died too. This was the rumor
that reached Everard’s ears on the morning after, when he went to seek
his mother in the back room she had inhabited at the hotel, and found no
trace of her, but this legend to explain her absence. It had been hard
to get at his heart, perhaps impossible by ordinary means; but this news
struck him like a mortal blow. And his organization was not like hers.
He fell prostrate under it, and it was weeks before he got better and
could be removed. The hands into which this weakling fell were nerveless
but gentle hands. Aunt Sophy had “taken to” him from the first, and he
had always responded to her kindness. When he was able to go home she
took “Grace’s boy” to her own house, where the climate was milder than
at Highcourt; and by dint of a quite uncritical and undiscriminating
affection, and perfect contentment with him as he was, in the virtue of
his convalescence, did more to make of Edmund Everard a tolerable member
of an unexacting society than his mother could ever have done. There are
some natures for whose treatment it is well that their parents should be
fools. It seems cruel to apply such a word to the kind but silly soul
who had so much true bounty and affection in her. She and he gave each
other a great deal of consolation and mutual advantage in the course of
the years.
Russell had been, like Everard, incapable of supposing that the victim
might die under their hands; and when all seemed to point to that
certainty, the shock of shame and remorse helped to change the entire
tenor of her life. She who had left the village triumphantly announcing
herself as indispensable to the family and the children, could not
return there in circumstances so changed. She married Mrs. Lennox’s
Swiss servant in haste, and thereafter spent her life in angry
repentance. She now keeps a _Pension_ in Switzerland, where her quality
of Englishwoman is supposed to attract English visitors, and lays up her
gains bitterly amid “foreign ways,” which she tells any new-comer she
cannot abide.
And Rosalind did what probably Mr. Ruskin’s Rosiere, tired of her seven
suitors, would in most cases do--escaping from the illusions of her own
imagination and from the passion which had frightened her, fell back
upon the steady, faithful love which had executed no hard task for her,
done no heroic deed, but only loved her persistently, pertinaciously,
through all. She married Roland Hamerton some months after they all
returned home. And thus this episode of family history came to an end.
Probably she would have done the same without any strain of compulsion
had these calamities and changes never been.
THE END.