Маргарет Олифант
Madam
“Why, you know him! and yet he does not take his hat off. Who is it, Rosalind?”
“I have seen him—in the village—”
“Oh, I know,” cried little Sophy, pushing forward. “It is the gentleman. I have seen him often. He lived at the Red Lion. Don’t you remember, Rosalind, the gentleman that mamma wouldn’t let me—”
“Oh, Sophy, be quiet!” cried the girl. What poignant memories awoke with the words!
“But how strange he looks,” cried Sophy. “His hat down over his eyes, and I believe he has got a beard or something—”
“You must not run on like that. I dare say it is quite a different person,” said Aunt Sophy. “What made me notice him is that he has eyes exactly like little Johnny’s eyes.”
It was one of Aunt Sophy’s weaknesses that she was always finding out likenesses; but Rosalind’s mind was disturbed by another form of her original difficulty about the stranger. It might be forgiven him that he hung about her path, and even followed at a distance; it was excusable that he should ask if he could help her with the child; but having thus ventured to accost her, and having established a sort of acquaintance by being useful to her, why, when their eyes met, did he make no sign of recognition? No, he could not be a gentleman! Then Rosalind awoke with horror to find that on the very first day after all the calamities that had befallen her family she was able to discuss such a question with herself.
CHAPTER XXIII
John Trevanion remained in the empty house. It had seemed that morning as if nothing could be more miserable: but it was more miserable now, when every cheerful element had gone out of it, and not even the distant sound of a child’s voice, or Rosalind’s dress, with its faint sweep of sound, was to be heard in the vacancy. After he had seen them off he walked home through the village with a very heavy heart. In front of the little inn there was an unusual stir: a number of rustic people gathered about the front of the house, surrounding two men of an aspect not at all rustical, who were evidently questioning the slow but eager rural witnesses. “It must ha’ been last night as he went,” said one. “I don’t know when he went,” said another, “but he never come in to his supper, I’ll take my oath o’ that.” They all looked somewhat eagerly towards John, who felt himself compelled to interfere, much as he disliked doing so. “What is the matter?” he asked, and then from half a dozen eager mouths the story rushed out. “A gentleman” had been living at the Red Lion for some time back. Nobody, it appeared, could make out what he wanted there; everybody (they now said) suspected him from the first. He would lie in bed all morning, and then get up towards afternoon. Nothing more was necessary to demonstrate his immorality, the guilt of the man. He went out trapesing in the woods at night, but he wasn’t no poacher, for he never seemed to handle a gun nor know aught about it. He would turn white when anybody came in and tried a trigger, or to see if the ball was drawn. No, he wasn’t no poacher: but he did always be in the woods o’ night, which meant no good, the rustics thought. There were whisperings aside, and glances, as this description was given, which were not lost upon John, but his attention was occupied in the first place by the strangers, who came forward and announced that they were detectives in search of an offender, a clerk in a merchant’s office, who had absconded, having squandered a considerable sum of his master’s money. “But this is an impossible sort of place for such a culprit to have taken refuge in,” John said, astounded. The chief of the two officers stepped out in front of the other, and asked if he might say a few words to the gentleman, then went on accompanying John, as he mechanically continued his way, repressing all appearance of the extraordinary commotion thus produced in his mind.
“You see, sir,” said the man, “it’s thought that the young fellow had what you may call a previous connection here.”
“Ah! was he perhaps related to some one in the village? I never heard his name.” (The name was Everard, and quite unknown to the neighborhood.)
“No, Mr. Trevanion,” said the other, significantly, “not in the village.”
“Where, then—what do you mean? What could the previous connection that brought him here be?”
The man took a pocket-book from his pocket, and produced a crumpled envelope. “You may have seen this writing before, sir,” he said.
John took it with a thrill of pain and alarm, recognizing the paper, the stamp of “Highcourt,” torn but decipherable on the seal, and feeling himself driven to one conclusion which he would fain have pushed from him; but when he had smoothed it out, with a hand which trembled in spite of himself, he suddenly cried out, with a start of overwhelming surprise and relief, “Why, it is my brother’s hand!”
“Your brother’s?” cried the officer, with a blank look. “You mean, sir, the gentleman that was buried yesterday?”
“My brother, Mr. Trevanion, of Highcourt. I do not know how he can have been connected with the person you seek. It must have been some accidental link. I have already told you I never heard the name.”
The man was as much confused and startled as John himself. “If that’s so,” he said, “you have put us off the track, and I don’t know now what to do. We had heard,” he added, with a sidelong look of vigilant observation, “that there was a lady in the case.”
“I know nothing about any lady,” said John Trevanion, briefly.
“There’s no trusting to village stories, sir. We were told that a lady had disappeared, and that it was more than probable—”
“As you say, village stories are entirely untrustworthy,” said John. “I can throw no light on the subject, except that the address on the envelope (Everard, is it?) is in my brother’s hand. He might, of course, have a hundred correspondents unknown to me, but I certainly never heard of this one. I suppose there is no more I can do for you, for I am anxious to get back to Highcourt. You have heard, no doubt, that the family is in deep mourning and sorrow.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said the official, “and distressed to have interrupted you at such a moment, but it is our duty to leave no stone unturned.” Then he lingered for a moment. “I suppose, then,” he said, “there is no truth in the story about the lady—”
John turned upon him with a short laugh. “You don’t expect me, I hope, to answer for all the village stories about ladies,” he said, waving his hand as he went on. “I have told you all I know.”
He quickened his pace and his companion fell back. But the officer was not satisfied, and John Trevanion went on, with his mind in a dark and hopeless confusion, not knowing what extraordinary addition of perplexity was added to the question by this new piece of evidence, but feeling vaguely that it increased the darkness all around him. He had not in any way associated the stranger whom he had met on the road with his sister-in-law. He had thought it likely enough that the young man, perhaps of pretensions too humble to get admittance at Highcourt, had lingered about in foolish youthful adoration of Rosalind, which, however presumptuous it might be, was natural enough. To hear now that the young man who had presumed to do Miss Trevanion a service was a criminal in hiding made his blood boil. But his brother’s handwriting threw everything into confusion. How did this connect with the rest, what light did it throw upon the imbroglio, in what way could it be connected with the disappearance of Madam? All these things surged about him vaguely as he walked, but he could make nothing coherent, no rational whole out of them. The park and the trees lay in a heavy mist. The day was not cold, but stifling, with a low sky, and heavy vapors in the air, everything around wet, sodden, dreary. Never had the long stretches of turf and distant glades of trees seemed to him so lonely, so deserted and forsaken. There was not a movement to be seen, nobody coming by that public pathway which had been so great a grievance to the Trevanions for generations back. John, though he shared the family feeling in this respect, would have gladly now seen a village procession moving along the contested path. The house seemed to him to lie in a cold enclosure of mist and damp, abandoned by everybody, a spot on which there was a curse. But this, of course, was merely fanciful; and he shook off the feeling. There was pain enough involved in its recent history without the aid of imagination.
There was plenty to do, however. Mr. Trevanion’s papers had to be put in order, his personal affairs wound up; and it was almost better to have no interruption in this duty, and so get over it as quickly as possible. There is something dreadful under all circumstances in fulfilling this office. To examine into the innermost recesses in which a man has kept his treasures, his most intimate possessions, the records, perhaps, of his affections and ambitions; to open his desk, to pull out his drawers, to turn over the letters which, perhaps, to him were sacred, never to be revealed to any eye but his own, is an office from which it is natural to shrink. The investigator feels himself a spy, taking advantage of the pathetic helplessness of the dead, their powerlessness to protect themselves. John Trevanion sat down in the library with the sense of intrusion strong upon him, yet with a certain painful curiosity too. He was afraid of discovering something. At every new harmless paper which he opened he drew a long breath of relief. The papers of recent times were few—they were chiefly on the subject of money, the investments which had been made, appeals for funds sent to him for the needs of the estate, for repairs and improvements, which it was evident Mr. Trevanion had been slow to yield to. It seemed from the letters addressed to him that most of his business had been managed through his wife, which was a fact his brother was aware of; but somehow the constant reference to her, and the evident position assigned to her as in reality the active agency in the whole, added a curious and bewildering pang to the confusion in which all this had closed. It seemed beyond belief that this woman, who had stood by her husband so faithfully, his nurse, his adviser, his agent, his eyes and ears, should be now a sort of fugitive, under the dead man’s ban, separated from all she cared for in the world. John stopped in the middle of a bundle of letters to ask himself whether he had ever known a similar case. There was nothing like it in the law reports, nothing even in those causes célèbres which include so many wonders. A woman with everything in her hands, her husband’s business as well as his health, and the governance of her great household, suddenly turned away from it without reason given or any explanation—surely the man must have been mad—surely he must have been mad! It was the only solution that seemed possible. But then there arose before the thinker’s troubled vision those scenes which had preceded his brother’s death—the bramble upon her dress, the wet feet which she had avowed, with—was it a certain bravado? And again, that still more dreadful moment in the park, on the eve of her husband’s funeral, when he had himself seen her meet and talk with some one who was invisible in the shadow of the copse. He had seen it, there could be no question on the subject. What did it mean? He got up, feeling the moisture rise to his forehead in the conflict of his feelings; he could not sit still and go for the hundredth time over this question. What did it mean?
While he was walking up and down the library, unable to settle to any examination of those calm business papers in which no agitation was, a letter was brought to him. It bore the stamp of a post-town at a short distance, and he turned it over listlessly enough, until it occurred to him that the writing was that of his sister-in-law. Madam wrote as many women write; there was nothing remarkable about her hand. John Trevanion opened the letter with excitement. It was as follows:
“Dear Brother John,—You may not wish me to call you so now, but I have always felt towards you so, and it still seems a link to those I have left behind to have one relationship which I may claim. There seems no reason why I should not write to you, or why I should conceal from you where I am. You will not seek to bring me back; I am safe enough in your hands. I am going out of England, but if you want to communicate with me on any subject, the bankers will always know where I am. It is, as I said, an additional humiliation in my great distress that I must take the provision my husband has made, and cannot fling it back to you indignantly as a younger woman might. I am old enough to know, and bitterly acknowledge, that I cannot hope to maintain myself; and I have others dependent on me. This necessity will always make it easy enough to find me, but I do not fear that you will wish to seek me out or bring me back.
“I desire you to know that I understand my husband’s will better than any one else, and perhaps, knowing his nature, blame him less than you will be disposed to do. When he married me I was very forlorn and miserable. I had a story, which is the saddest thing that can be said of a woman. He was generous to me then in every particular but one, but that one was very important. I had to make a sacrifice, an unjustifiable sacrifice, and a promise which was unnatural. Herein lies my fault. I have not kept that promise; I could not; it was more than flesh and blood was capable of; and I deceived him. I was always aware that if he discovered it he might, and probably would, take summary vengeance. Now he has discovered it, and he has done without ruth what he promised me to do if I broke my word to him. I deserve it, you see, though not in the way the vulgar will suppose. To them I cannot explain, and circumstances, alas, make it impossible for me to be explicit even with you. But perhaps, even in writing so much, you may be delivered from some suspicions of me which, if I read you right, you will be glad to find are not justified.
“Farewell, dear John; if we ever should meet in this world—if I should ever be cleared— I cannot tell—most likely not—my children will grow up without knowing me; but I dare not think on that subject, much less say anything. God bless them! Be as much a father to them as you can, and let my Rosalind have the letter I enclose; it will do her no harm: anyhow, she would not believe harm of me, even though she saw what looked like harm. Pity me a little, John. I have taken my doom quietly because I have no hope—neither in what I leave nor in what I go to is there any hope.
Grace Trevanion.”
This letter forced tears, such as a man is very slow to shed, to John Trevanion’s eyes; but there was in reality no explanation in it, no light upon the family catastrophe, or the confusion of misery and perplexity she had left behind.
CHAPTER XXIV
“Have you ever noticed in your walks, doctor, a young fellow?—you couldn’t but remark him—a sort of primo tenore, big eyed, pale faced—”
“All pulmonary,” said Dr. Beaton. “I know the man you mean. He has been hanging about for a month, more or less, with no visible object. To tell the truth—”
John Trevanion raised his hand instinctively. “I find,” he said, interrupting with a hurried precaution, “that he has been in hiding for some offence, and men have come after him here because of an envelope with the Highcourt stamp—”
Here Dr. Beaton began, with a face of regret, yet satisfaction, to nod his head, with that offensive air of “I knew it all the time,” which is more exasperating than any other form of remark.
“The Highcourt stamp,” continued Trevanion, peremptorily, “and a direction written in my poor brother’s hand.”
“In your brother’s hand!”
“I thought I should surprise you,” John said, with a grim satisfaction. “I suppose it is according to the rules of the profession that so much time should have been let slip. I am very glad of it, for my part. Whatever Reginald can have had to do with the fellow—something accidental, no doubt—it would have been disagreeable to have his name mixed up— I saw the man myself trying to make himself agreeable to Rosalind.”
“To Miss Trevanion?” cried the doctor, with evident dismay. “Why, I thought—”
“Oh, it was a very simple matter,” said John, interrupting again. “He laid down some planks for her to cross the floods. And the recompense she gave him was to doubt whether he was a gentleman, because he had paid her a compliment—which I must say struck me as a very modest attempt at a compliment.”
“It was a tremendous piece of presumption,” said the doctor, with Scotch warmth. “I don’t doubt Miss Rosalind’s instinct was right, and that he was no gentleman. He had not the air of it, in my opinion—a limp, hollow-eyed, phthisical subject.”
“But consumption does not spare even the cream of society, doctor. It appears he must have had warning of the coming danger, for he seems to have got away.”
“I thought as much!” said Dr. Beaton. “I never expected to see more of him after— Oh, I thought as much!”
John Trevanion eyed the doctor with a look that was almost threatening, but he said nothing more. Dr. Beaton, too, was on the eve of departure; his occupation was gone, and his tête-à-tête with John Trevanion not very agreeable to either of them. But the parting was friendly on all sides. “The doctor do express himself very nicely,” Dorrington said, when he joined the company in the housekeeper’s room, after having solemnly served the two gentlemen at dinner, “about his stay having been agreeable and all that—just what a gentleman ought to say. There are medical men of all kinds, just as there are persons of all sorts in domestic service; and the doctor, he’s one of the right sort.”
“And a comfort, whatever ailed one, to know there was a doctor in the house, and as you’d be right done by,” the housekeeper said, which was the general view in the servants’ hall. These regions were, as may be supposed, deeply agitated. Russell, one of the most important among them, had been sent forth weeping and vituperating, and the sudden departure of the family had left the household free to make every commentary, possible and impossible. Needless to say that Madam’s disappearance had but one explanation among them. In all circles the question would have been so decided by the majority; in the servants’ hall there was unanimity; no one was bold enough to make a different suggestion, and had it been made it would have been laughed to scorn. There were various stories told about her supposed lover, and several different suppositions current. Gentlemen of different appearances had been seen about the park by different spectators, and men in careful disguises had even been admitted into the house, some were certain. That new man who came to wind the clocks! Why should a new man have been sent? And he had white hands, altogether unlike the hands of one who worked for his living. The young man who had lived at the Red Lion was not left out of the suspicions of the house, but he had not so important a place there as he had in the mind, for example, of Dr. Beaton, who had, with grief and pain, but now not without a certain satisfaction, concluded upon his identity. The buzz and talk, and the whirl of suppositions and real or imaginary evidence, made a sort of reverberation through the house. Now and then, when doors were open and the household off their guard, which, occurred not unfrequently in the extraordinary calm and leisure, the sounds of the eager voices were heard even as far as the library, in which John Trevanion sat with his papers, and sometimes elicited from him a furious message full of bitterness and wrath. “Can’t you keep your subordinates quiet and your doors shut,” he said to Dorrington, “instead of leaving them to disturb me with their infernal clatter and gossip?” “I will see to it, sir,” said Dorrington, with dignity; “but as for what goes on in the servants’ ’all, I ’ear it only as you ’ear it yourself, sir.” John bade the over-fine butler to go to—a personage who need not be named, to whom very fine persons go; and went on with his papers with a consciousness of all that was being said, the flutter of endless talk which before now must have blown abroad over all the country, and the false conclusions that would be formed. He could not publish her letter in the same way—her letter, which said so much yet so little, which did not, alas, explain anything. She had accepted the burden, fully knowing what it was, not deceiving herself as to anything that was to follow; but in such a case the first sufferer is scarcely so much to be pitied as the succeeding victims, who have all the misery of seeing the martyr misconstrued and their own faith laughed at. There were times indeed when John Trevanion was not himself sure that he had any faith, and felt himself incapable of striving any longer with the weight of probability against her which she had never attempted to remove or explain.
He went through all the late Mr. Trevanion’s papers without finding any light on the subject of his connection with Everard, or which could explain the fact of his letter to that person. Several letters from his bankers referred indeed to the payment of money at Liverpool, which was where the offender had lived, but this was too faint a light to be calculated upon. As the days went on, order came to a certain degree out of the confusion in John Trevanion’s mind. To be suddenly turned out of the easy existence of a London bachelor about town, with his cosey chambers and luxurious club, and made to assume the head and charge of a family so tragically abandoned, was an extraordinary effort for any man. It was a thing, could he have known it beforehand, which would have made him fly to the uttermost parts of the earth to avoid such a charge; but to have no choice simplifies matters, and the mind habituates itself instinctively to what it is compelled to do. He decided, after much thought, that it was better the family should not return to Highcourt. In the changed circumstances, and deprived of maternal care and protection as they were, no woman about them more experienced than Rosalind, their return could not be otherwise than painful and embarrassing. He decided that they should remain with their aunt, having absolute confidence in her delighted acceptance of their guardianship. Sophy, indeed, was quite incapable of such a charge, but they had Rosalind, and they had the ordinary traditions by which such families are guided. They would, he thought, come to no harm. Mrs. Lennox lived in the neighborhood of Clifton, far enough off to avoid any great or general knowledge of the family tragedy. The majority of the servants were consequently dismissed, and Highcourt, with its windows all closed and its chimneys all but smokeless, fell back into silence, and stood amid its park and fine trees, a habitation of the dead.
It was not until he had done this that John Trevanion carried her stepmother’s letter to Rosalind. He had a very agitating interview with her on the day of his arrival at the Limes, which was the suburban appellation of Sophy’s house. He had to bear the artillery of anxious looks during dinner, and to avoid as he could his sister’s questions, which were not over wise, as to what he had heard, and what he thought, and what people were saying; and it was not till the evening, when the children were disposed of, and Sophy herself had retired, that Rosalind, putting her hand within his arm, drew him to the small library, in which Mrs. Lennox allowed the gentlemen to “make themselves comfortable,” as she said, tolerating tobacco. “I know you have something to say to me, Uncle John—something that you could not say before—them all.”
“Little to say, but something to give you, Rosalind.” She recognized her stepmother’s handwriting in a moment, though it was, as we have said, little remarkable, and with a cry of agitated pleasure threw herself upon it. It was a bulky letter, not like that which he had himself received, but when it was opened was found to contain a long and particular code of directions about the children, and only a small accompanying note. This Rosalind read with an eagerness which made her cheeks glow.
“My Rosalind, I am sometimes glad to think now that you are not mine, and never can have it said to you that your mother is not—as other mothers are. Sophy and little Amy are not so fortunate. You must make it up to them, my darling, by being everything to them—better than I could have been. And when people see what you are they will forget me.
“That is not to say, my dearest, that you are to give up your faith in me. For the moment all is darkness—perhaps will always be darkness, all my life. There are cases that may occur in which I shall be able to tell you everything, but what would that matter so long as your father’s prohibition stands? My heart grows sick when I think that in no case— But we will not dwell upon that. My own (though you are not my own), remember me, love me. I am no more unworthy of it than other women are. I have written down all I can think of about the children. You will no doubt have dismissed Russell, but after a time I almost think she should be taken back, for she loves the children. She always hated me, but she loves them. If you can persuade yourself to do it, take her back. Love is too precious to be lost. I am going away from you all very quietly, not permitting myself to reflect. When you think of me, believe that I am doing all I can to live—to live long enough to see my children again. My darling, my own child, I will not say good-bye to you, but only God bless you; and till we meet again,
“Your true Mother and Friend.”
“My true mother,” Rosalind said, with the tears in her eyes, “my dearest friend! Oh, Uncle John, was there ever any such misery before? Was it ever so with any woman? Were children ever made wretched like this, and forced to suffer? And why should it fall to our share?”
John Trevanion shook his head, pondering over the letter, and over the long, perfectly calm, most minute, and detailed instructions which accompanied it. There was nothing left out or forgotten in these instructions. She must have spent the night in putting down every little detail, the smallest as well as the greatest. The writing of the letter to Rosalind showed a little trembling; a tear had fallen on it at one spot; but the longer paper showed nothing of the kind. It was as clear and steady as the many manuscripts from the same hand which he had looked over among his brother’s papers; statements of financial operations, of farming, of improvements. She had put down all the necessary precautions to be taken for her children in the same way, noting all their peculiarities, for the guidance of the young sister who was hereafter to have the charge of them. This document filled the man with the utmost wonder. Rosalind took it a great deal more easily. To her it was natural that her mother should give these instructions; they were of the highest importance to herself in her novel position, and she understood perfectly that Madam would be aware of the need of them, and that to make some provision for that need would be one of the first things to occur to her. But John Trevanion contemplated the paper from a very different point of view. That a woman so outraged and insulted as (if she were innocent) she must feel herself to be, should pause on the eve of her departure from everything dear to her, from honor and consideration, her home and her place among her peers, to write about Johnny’s tendency to croup and Amy’s readiness to catch cold, was to him more marvellous than almost anything that had gone before. He lingered over it, reading mechanically all those simple directions. A woman at peace, he thought, might have done it, one who knew no trouble more profound than a child’s cough or chilblains. But this woman—in the moment of her anguish—before she disappeared into the darkness of the distant world! “I do not understand it at all,” he said as he put it down.
“Oh,” cried Rosalind, “who could understand it? I think papa must have been mad. Are not bad wills sometimes broken, Uncle John?”
“Not such a will as this. He had a right to leave his money as he pleased.”
“But if we were all to join—if we were to show the mistake, the dreadful mistake, he had made—”
“What mistake? You could prove that your stepmother was no common woman, Rosalind. A thing like this is astounding to me. I don’t know how she could do it. You might prove that she had the power to make fools of you and me. But you could prove nothing more, my dear. Your father knew something more than we know. It might be no mistake; he might have very good reason. Even this letter, though it makes you cry, explains nothing, Rosalind.”
“I want nothing explained,” cried the girl. “Do you think I have any doubt of her? I could not bear that she should explain—as if I did not know what she is! But, Uncle John, let us all go together to the judge that can do it, and tell him everything, and get him to break the will.”
“The judge who can do that is not to be found in Westminster, Rosalind. It must be one that sees into the heart. I believe in her too—without any reason—but to take it to law would only be to make our domestic misery a little better known.”
Rosalind looked at him with large eyes full of light and excitement. She felt strong enough to defy the world. “Do you mean to say that, whatever happens, though we could prove what we know of her, that she is the best—the best woman in the world—”
“Were she as pure as ice, as chaste as snow, there is nothing to be done. Your father does not say, because of this or that. What he says is absolute. If she continue with the children, or in communication with them, they lose everything.”
“Then let us lose everything,” cried Rosalind in her excitement; “rather be poor and work for our bread, than lose our mother.”
