“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.”
John Trevanion shook his head. “She has already chosen,” he said.