IT was not on that day, but the next, that Uncle John arrived so suddenly, bringing with him the friend whom he had picked up in Switzerland. This was a man still young, but not so young as Roland Hamerton, with looks a little worn, as of a man who had been, as he himself said, “knocking about the world.” Perhaps, indeed, they all thought afterwards, it was his dress which suggested this idea; for when he appeared dressed for the evening he turned out in reality a handsome man, with the very effective contrast of hair already gray, waving upwards from a countenance not old enough to justify that change, and lighted up with dark eyes full of light and humor and life. The hair which had changed its color so early had evidently been very dark in his youth, and Mrs. Lennox, who was always a little romantic, could not help suggesting, when Rosalind and she awaited the gentlemen in the drawing-room after dinner, that Mr. Rivers might be an example of one of the favorite devices of fiction, the turning gray in a single night, which is a possibility of which every one has heard. “I should not wonder if he has had a very remarkable life,” Aunt Sophy said. “No doubt the servants and common people think him quite old, but when you look into it, it is a young face.” She took her chair by the fireside, and arranged all her little paraphernalia, and unfolded her crewel-work, and had done quite half a leaf before she burst forth again, as if without any interval, “though full of lines, and what you might call wrinkles if you did not know better! In my young days such a man would have been thought like Lara or Conrad, or one of Byron’s other heroes. I don’t know who to compare him to nowadays, for men of that sort are quite out of fashion; but he is quite a hero, I have a conviction, and saved John’s life.”
“He says Uncle John was in no danger, and that he did nothing that a guide or a servant might not have done.”
“My dear,” said Aunt Sophy, “that is what they always say; the more they do the less they will give in to it.”
“To call that old man like the Wandering Jew a hero!” said little Sophy. “Yes, I have seen him. I saw him arrive with Uncle John. He looked quite old and shabby; oh, not a bit like Lara, whose hair was jet-black, and who scowled when he looked at you.”
“Why, how can you tell, you little— Rosalind, I am afraid Miss Robinson must be romantic, for Sophy knows—oh, a great deal more than a little girl ought to know.”
“It was in your room that I found ‘Lara,’” said Sophy, “and the ‘Corsair’ too; I have read them all. Oh, Miss Robinson never reads them; she reads little good books where everybody dies. I do not admire Mr. Rivers at all, and if Uncle John should intend to give him one of us because he has saved his life, I hope it will not be me.”
“Sophy, I shall send you to bed if you talk so. Give him one of you! I suppose you think you are in a fairy tale. Mr. Rivers would laugh if you were offered to him. He would think it was a curious reward.”
“He might like Rosalind better, perhaps, now, but Rosalind has gone off, Aunt Sophy. Ferriss says so. She is getting rather old. Don’t you know she is in her twenty-first year?”
“Rosalind! why, I never saw her looking better in her life. Ferriss shall be sent away if she talks such impertinence. And she is just twenty! Going off! she is not the least going off: her complexion is just beautiful, and so fresh. I don’t know what you mean, you or Ferriss either!” Mrs. Lennox cried. She had always a little inclination to believe what was suggested to her; and, notwithstanding the complete assurance of her words, she followed Rosalind, who was moving about at the other end of the room, with eyes that were full of sudden alarm.
“And I am in my thirteenth year,” said Sophy; “it sounds much better than to say only twelve. I shall improve, but Rosalind will not improve. If he were sensible, he would like me best.”
“Don’t let your sister hear you talk such nonsense, Sophy: and remember that I forbid you to read the books in my room without asking me first. There are things that are very suitable for me, or even for Rosalind, but not for you. And what are you doing down-stairs at this hour, Sophy? I did not remember the hour, but it is past your bedtime. Miss Robinson should not let you have so much of your own way.”
“It was because of Uncle John,” said Rosalind. “What has she been saying about Lara and the Corsair? I could not hear, Saunders made so much noise with the tea. Here is your tea, Aunt Sophy, though you know Dr. Beaton says you ought not to take it after dinner, and that it keeps you from sleeping.”
“Dr. Beaton goes upon the new-fashioned rules, my dear,” said Mrs. Lennox. “It never keeps me from my sleep; nothing does that, thank God. It is the young people that are so delicate nowadays, that can’t take this and that. I wonder if John has any news of Dr. Beaton. He had a great many fads like that about the tea, but he was very nice. What a comfort he was to poor Reginald, and took so much anxiety off Gra—”
“I declare,” Aunt Sophy cried, coloring and coughing, “I have caught cold, though I have not been out of the house since the cold weather set in. My dear, I am so sorry,” she added in an undertone; “I know I should not have said a word—”
“I have never been of that opinion,” said Rosalind, shaking her head sadly. “I think you are all taking the wrong way.”
“For Heaven’s sake don’t say a word, Rosalind; with John coming in, and that little thing with ears as sharp—”
“Is it me that have ears so sharp, Aunt Sophy? It is funny to hear you talk. You think I don’t know anything, but I know everything. I know why Roland Hamerton is always coming here; and I know why Mr. Blake never comes, but only the old gentleman. And, Rosalind, you had better make up your mind and take some one, for you are getting quite passée, and you will soon be an old maid.”
“Sophy! if you insult your sister—”
“Do you think that is insulting me?” Rosalind said. “I believe I shall be an old maid. That would suit me best, and it would be best for the children, who will want me for a long time.”
“My dear,” said Aunt Sophy, solemnly, “there are some things I will never consent to, and one of them is, a girl like you making such a sacrifice. That is what I will never give in to. Oh, go away, Sophy, you are a perfect nuisance! No, no, I will never give in to it. For such a sacrifice is always repented of. When the children grow up they will not be a bit grateful to you; they will never think it was for them you did it. They will talk of you as if it was something laughable, and as if you could not help it. An old maid! Yes, it is intended for an insult, and I won’t have it, any more than I will have you do it, Rosalind.”
“Oh, Uncle John,” cried the enfant terrible, “there is Aunt Sophy with tears in her eyes because I said Rosalind was going to be an old maid. But it is not anything so very dreadful, is it? Why, Uncle John, you are an old maid.”
“I don’t think Rosalind’s prospects need distress you, Sophy,” said Uncle John. “We can take care of her in any case. She will not want your valuable protection.”
“Oh, I was not thinking of myself; I don’t mind at all,” said Sophy; “but only she is getting rather old. Don’t you see a great difference, Uncle John? She is in her twenty-first year.”
“I shall not lose hope till she has completed her thirty-third,” said Uncle John. “You may run away, Sophy; you are young enough, fortunately, to be sent to bed.”
“I am in my thirteenth,” said Sophy, resisting every step of her way to the door, dancing in front of her uncle, who was directing her towards it. When Sophy found that resistance was vain, she tried entreaty.
“Oh, Uncle John, don’t send me away! Rosalind promised I should sit up to-night because you were coming home.”
“Then Rosalind must take the consequences,” said John Trevanion. All this time the stranger had been standing silent, with a slight smile on his face, watching the whole party, and forming those unconscious conclusions with which we settle everybody’s character and qualities when we come into a new place. This little skirmish was all in his favor, as helping him to a comprehension of the situation; the saucy child, the indulgent old aunt, the disapproving guardian, of whom alone Sophy was a little afraid, made a simple group enough. But when he turned to the subject of the little disturbance, he found in Rosalind’s smile a curious light thrown upon the altercation. Was she in real danger of becoming an old maid? He thought her looking older than the child had said, a more gracious and perfect woman than was likely to be the subject of such a controversy; and he saw, by the eager look and unnecessary indignation of Hamerton, sufficient evidence that the fate of the elder sister was by no means so certain as Sophy thought, and that, at all events, it was in her own hands. The young fellow had seemed to Mr. Rivers a pleasant young fellow enough in the after-dinner talk, but when he thus involuntarily coupled him with Rosalind, his opinion changed in a curious way. The young man was not good enough for her. A touch of indignation mingled, he could not tell why, in this conclusion; indignation against unconscious Roland, who aspired to one so much above him, and at the family who were so little aware that this girl was the only one of them the least remarkable. He smiled at himself afterwards for the earnestness with which he decided all this; settling the character of people whom he had never seen before in so unjustifiable a fashion. The little new world thus revealed to him had nothing very novel in it. The only interesting figure was the girl who was in her twenty-first year. She was good enough for the heroine of a romance of a higher order than any that could be involved in the mild passion of young Hamerton; and it pleased the stranger to think, from the unconcerned way in which Rosalind looked at her admirer, that she was evidently of this opinion too.
“Rosalind,” said John Trevanion, after the episode of Sophy was over, and she was safely dismissed to bed, “will you show Rivers the miniatures? He is a tremendous authority on art.”
“Bring the little lamp then, Uncle John; there is not light enough. We are very proud of them ourselves, but if Mr. Rivers is a great authority, perhaps they will not please him so much.”
She took up the lamp herself as she spoke, and its light gave a soft illumination to her face, looking up at him with a smile. It was certain that there was nothing so interesting here as she was. The miniatures! well, yes, they were not bad miniatures. He suggested a name as the painter of the best among them which pleased John Trevanion, and fixed the date in a way which fell in entirely with family traditions. Perhaps he would not have been so gracious had the exhibitor been less interesting. He took the lamp, which she had insisted upon holding, out of her hand when the inspection was done, and set it down upon a table which was at some distance from the fireside group. It was a writing-table, with indications upon it of the special ownership of Rosalind. But this he could not be supposed to know. He thought it would be pleasant, however, to detain her here in conversation, apart from the others who were so much more ordinary, for he was a man who liked to appropriate to himself the best of everything. And fortune favored his endeavors. As he put down the lamp his eye was caught by a photograph framed in a sort of shrine, which stood upon the table. The doors of the little shrine were open, and he stooped to look at the face within, at the sight of which he uttered an exclamation. “I know that lady very well,” he said.
In a moment the courteous attention which Rosalind had been giving him turned into eager interest. She made a hurried step forward, clasped her hands together, and raised to him eyes which all at once had filled with sudden tragic meaning, anxiety, and suspense. If there had seemed to him before much more in her than in any of the others, there was a hundredfold more now. He seemed in a moment to have got at the very springs of her life. “Oh, where, where have you seen her? When did you see her? Tell me all you know,” Rosalind cried. She turned to him, betraying in her every gesture an excess of suddenly awakened feeling, and waited breathless, repeating her inquiry with her eyes.
“I was afraid, from the way in which her portrait was framed, that perhaps she was no longer—”
Rosalind gave a low cry, following the very movements of his lips with her eager eyes. Then she exclaimed, “No, no, she must be living, or we should have heard.”
“What is it, Rosalind?” said John Trevanion, looking somewhat pale and anxious too, as he turned round to join them.
“Uncle John, Mr. Rivers knows her. He is going to tell me something.”
“But really I have nothing to tell, Miss Trevanion. I fear I have excited your interest on false pretences. It is such an interesting face—so beautiful in its way.”
“Oh, yes, yes.”
“I met the lady last year in Spain. I cannot say that I know her, though I said so in the surprise of the moment. One could not see her without being struck with her appearance.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” Rosalind cried again, eagerly, with her eyes demanding more.
“I met her several times. They were travelling out of the usual routes. I have exchanged a few chance words with her at the door of a hotel, or on the road, changing horses. I am sorry to say that was all, Miss Trevanion.”
“Last year; that is later than we have heard. And was she well? Was she very sad? Did she say anything? But, oh, how could she say anything? for she could not tell,” cried Rosalind, her eyes filling, “that you were coming here.”
“Hush, Rosalind. You say they, Rivers. She was not alone, then?”
“Alone? oh, no, there was a man with her. I never could,” said Rivers, lightly, “make out who he was—more like a son or brother than her husband. But, to be sure, you who know the lady—”
He paused, entirely unable to account for the effect he had produced. Rosalind had grown as pale as marble; her mouth quivered, her hands trembled. She gave him the most pathetic, reproachful look, as a woman might have done whom he had stabbed unawares, and, getting up quickly from his side, went away with an unsteady, wavering movement, as if it were all her strength could do to get out of the room. Hamerton rushed forward to open the door for her, but he was too late, and he too came to look at Rivers with inquiring, indignant looks, as if to say, What have you done to her? “What have I done—what is wrong, Trevanion? Have I said anything I ought not to have said?” Rivers cried.
The only answer John Trevanion made was to drop down upon the seat Rosalind had left, with a suppressed groan, and to cover his face with his hands.