THUS a whole week of darkness and depression passed away.
Mr. Trevanion was a great personage in the county. It was fit that all honor should be done him. All the greatest persons in the neighborhood had to be convened to conduct him in due state to his other dwelling among the marbles of the mausoleum which his fathers had built. It had been necessary to arrange a day that would suit everybody, so that nothing should be subtracted from this concluding grandeur; and accordingly Highcourt remained, so to speak, in its suit of sables, with blinds drawn down and shutters closed, as if darkness had veiled this part of the earth. And, indeed, as it was the end of November, the face of the sky was dim with clouds, and heavy mists gathered over the trees, adding a deeper gloom to the shut-up house within. Life seemed to be congealed in the silent rooms, except when broken by such an outburst of impassioned feeling as that which John Trevanion had betrayed to Rosalind. Perhaps this relieved him a little, but it put a burden of vague misery upon her which her youth was quite unequal to bear. She awaited the funeral with feverish excitement, and a terror to which she could give no form.
The servants in a house are the only gainers on such an occasion: they derive a kind of pleasure from such a crisis of family fate. Blinds are not necessarily drawn down in the housekeeper’s room, and the servants’ hall is exempt from those heavier decorums which add a gloom above-stairs; and there is a great deal to talk about in the tragedy that is past and in the new arrangements that are to come, while all the details of a grand funeral give more gratification to the humbler members of the family, whose hearts are little affected, than they can be expected to do to those more immediately concerned. There was a stir of sombre pleasure throughout the house in preparation for the great ceremony which was being talked of over all the county: though Dorrington and his subordinates bore countenances more solemn than it is possible to portray, even that solemnity was part of the gloomy festival, and the current of life below was quickened by the many comers and goers whose office it was to provide everything that could show “respect” to the dead. Undertakers are not cheerful persons to think of, but they brought with them a great deal of commotion which was far from disagreeable, much eating and drinking, and additional activity everywhere. New mourning liveries, dresses for the maids, a flutter of newness and general acquisition lightened the bustle that was attendant upon the greater event. Why should some score of people mourn because one man of bad temper, seen perhaps once or twice a day by the majority, by some never seen at all, had been removed from the midst of them? It was not possible; and as everything that is out of the way is more or less a pleasure to unembarrassed minds, there was a thrill of subdued satisfaction, excitement, and general complacency, forming an unfit yet not unnatural background to the gloom and anxiety above. The family assembled at their sombre meals, where there was little conversation kept up, and then dispersed to their rooms, to such occupations as they could find, conversation seeming impossible. In any case a party at table must either be cheerful—which could not be looked for—or be silent, for such conversation as is natural while still the father lies dead in the house is not to be maintained by a mixed company around a common meal.
The doctor, who, of course, was one of the party, did his best to introduce a little variety into the monotonous meetings, but John Trevanion’s sombre countenance at the foot of the table was enough to have silenced any man, even had not the silence of Mrs. Trevanion and the tendency of Rosalind to sudden tears been enough to keep him in check. Dr. Beaton, however, was Reginald’s only comfort. They kept up a running talk, which perhaps even to the others was grateful, as covering the general gloom. Reginald had been much subdued by hearing that he was to return to school as soon as the funeral was over. He had found very little sympathy with his claims anywhere, and he was very glad to fall back upon the doctor. Indeed, if Highcourt was to be so dull as this, Rex could not but think school was far better. “Of course, I never meant,” he said to his sister, “to give up school—a fellow can’t do that. It looks as if he had been sent away. And now there’s those tiresome examinations for everything, even the Guards.”
“We shall be very dull for a long time,” said Rosalind. “How could it be possible otherwise? But you will cheer us up when you come home for the holidays; and, oh, Rex, you must always stand by mamma!”
“By mamma!” Rex said, with some surprise. “Why, she will be very well off—better off than any of us.” He had not any chivalrous feeling about his mother. Such a feeling we all think should spring up spontaneously in a boy’s bosom, especially if he has seen his mother ill-used and oppressed; but, as a matter of fact, this assumption is by no means to be depended on. A boy is at least as likely to copy a father who rails against women, and against the one woman in particular who is his wife, as to follow a vague general rule, which he has never seen put in practice, of respect and tender reverence for woman. Reginald had known his mother as the doer of everything, the endurer of everything. He had never heard that she had any weakness to be considered, and had never contemplated the idea that she should be put upon a pedestal and worshipped; and if he did not hit by insight of nature upon some happy medium between the two, it was not, perhaps, his fault. In the meantime, at all events, no sentiment on the subject inspired his boyish bosom.
Mrs. Trevanion, as these days went on, resumed gradually her former habits, so far as was possible in view of the fact that all her married life had been devoted to her husband’s service, and that she had dropped one by one every pursuit that separated her from him. The day before the funeral she came into the little morning-room in which Rosalind was sitting, and drew a chair to the fire. “I had almost forgotten the existence of this room,” she said. “So many things have dropped away from me. I forget what I used to do. What used I to do, Rosalind, before—”
She looked up with a pitiful smile. And, indeed, it seemed to both of them as if they had not sat quietly together, undisturbed, for years.
“You have always done—everything for everybody—as long as I can remember,” said Rosalind, with tender enthusiasm.
She shook her head. “I don’t think it has come to much use. I have been thinking over my life, over and over, these few days. It has not been very successful, Rosalind. Something has always spoiled my best efforts, I wonder if other people feel the same? Not you, my dear, you know nothing about it; you must not answer with your protestations. Looking back, I can see how it has always failed somehow. It is a curious thing to stand still, so living as I am, and look back upon my life, and sum it up as if it were past.”
“It is because a chapter of it is past,” said Rosalind. “Oh, mamma, I do not wonder! And you have stood at your post till the last moment; no wonder you feel as if everything were over.”
“Yes, I stood at my post: but perhaps another kind of woman would have soothed him when I irritated him. Your father—was not kind to me, Rosalind—”
The girl rose and put her arms round Mrs. Trevanion’s neck and kissed her. “No, mother,” she said.
“He was not kind. And yet, now that he has gone out of my life I feel as if nothing were left. People will think me a hypocrite. They will say I am glad to be free. But it is not so, Rosalind, remember: man and wife, even when they wound each other every day, cannot be nothing to each other. My occupation is gone; I feel like a wreck cast upon the shore.”
“Mother! how can you say that when we are all here, your children, who can do nothing without you?”
“My children—which children?” she said, with a wildness in her eyes as if she did not know what she was saying; and then she returned to her metaphor, like one thinking aloud; “like a wreck—that perhaps a fierce, high sea may seize again, a high tide, and drag out upon the waves once more. I wonder if I could beat and buffet those waves again as I used to do, and fight for my life—”
“Oh, mother, how could that ever be?—there is no sea here.”
“No, no sea—one gets figurative when one is in great trouble—what your father used to call theatrical, Rosalind. He said very sharp things—oh, things that cut like a knife. But I was not without fault any more than he; there is one matter in which I have not kept faith with him. I should like to tell you, to see what you think. I did not quite keep faith with him. I made him a promise, and— I did not keep it. He had some reason, though he did not know it, in all the angry things he said.”
Rosalind did not know what to reply; her heart beat high with expectation. She took her stepmother’s hand between hers, and waited, her very ears tingling, for the next word.
“I have had no success in that,” Mrs. Trevanion said, in the same dreary way, “in that no more than the rest. I have not done well with anything; except,” she said, looking up with a faint smile and brightening of her countenance, “you, Rosalind, my own dear, who are none of mine.”
“I am all of yours, mother,” cried the girl; “don’t disown me, for I shall always claim you—always! You are all the mother I have ever known.”
Then they held each other close for a moment, clinging one to the other. Could grief have appeared more natural? The wife and daughter, in their deep mourning, comforting each other, taking a little courage from their union—yet how many strange, unknown elements were involved. But Mrs. Trevanion said no more of the confidence she had seemed on the point of giving. She rose shortly after and went away, saying she was restless and could not do anything, or even stay still in one place. “I walk about my room and frighten Jane, but that is all I can do.”
“Stay here, mamma, with me, and walk about, or do what you please. I understand you better than Jane.”
Mrs. Trevanion shook her head; but whether it was to contradict that last assertion or merely because she could not remain, it was impossible to say. “To-morrow,” she said, “will be the end, and, perhaps, the beginning. I feel as if all would be over to-morrow. After that, Rosalind—”
She went away with the words on her lips. “After to-morrow.” And to Rosalind, too, it seemed as if her powers of endurance were nearly ended, and to-morrow would fill up the sum. But then, what was that further mysterious trouble which Uncle John feared?
Mrs. Trevanion appeared again to dinner, which was a very brief meal, but retired immediately; and the house was full of preparation for to-morrow—every one having, or seeming to have, something to do. Rosalind was left alone. She could not go and sit in the great, vacant drawing-room, all dimly lighted, and looking as if some party of the dead might be gathered about the vacant hearth; or in the hall, where now and then some one of the busy, nameless train of to-morrow’s ceremony would steal past. And it was too early to go to bed. She wrapped herself in a great shawl, and, opening the glass door, stole out into the night. The sweeping of the chill night air, the rustle of the trees, the stars twinkling overhead, gave more companionship than the silence and gloom within. She stood outside on the broad steps, leaning against one of the pillars, till she got chilled through and through, and began to think, with a kind of pleasure, of the glow of the fire.
But as she turned to go in a great and terrible shock awaited her. She had just come away from the pillar, which altogether obliterated her slight, dark figure in its shadow and gave her a sort of invisibility, when the glass door opened at a touch, and some one else came out. They met face to face in the darkness. Rosalind uttered a stifled cry; the other only by a pant of quickened breathing acknowledged the alarm. She was gliding past noiselessly, when Rosalind, with sudden courage, caught her by the cloak in which she was wrapped from head to foot. “Oh, not to-night, oh, not to-night!” she said, with a voice of anguish; “for God’s sake, mother, mother, not to-night!”
There was a pause, and no reply but the quick breathing, as if the passer-by had some hope of concealing herself. But then Madam spoke, in a low, hurried tone—“I must go; I must! but not for any pleasure of mine!”
Rosalind clung to her cloak with a kind of desperation. “Another time,” she said, “but not, oh, not to-night!”
“Let me go. God bless my dear! I cannot help it. I do only what I must. Rosalind, let me go,” she said.
And next moment the dark figure glided swiftly, mysteriously, among the bushes towards the park. Rosalind came in with despair in her heart. It seemed to her that nothing more was left to expect, or hope for. Her mother, the mistress of this sad house, the wife of the dead who still lay there awaiting his burial. At no other moment perhaps would the discovery have come upon her with such a pang; and yet at any moment what could it be but misery? Jane was watching furtively on the stairs to see that her mistress’s exit had been unnoticed. She was in the secret, the confidante, the— But Rosalind’s young soul knew no words; her heart seemed to die within her. She could do or hope no more.