Madam

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.

CHAPTER XXV

Russell left Highcourt in such wild commotion of mind and temper, such rage, grief, compunction, and pain, that she was incapable of any real perception of what had happened, and did not realise, until the damp air blowing in her face as she hurried across the park, sobbing and crying aloud, and scarcely able to keep herself from screaming, brought back her scattered faculties, either what it was that she had been instrumental in doing, or what she had brought upon herself. She did not now understand what it was that had happened to Madam, though she had a kind of vindictive joy, mingled with that sinking of the heart which those not altogether hardened to human suffering feel in regarding a catastrophe brought about by their means, in the thought that she had brought illimitable, irremediable harm to her mistress, whom she had always hated. She had done this whatever might come of it, and even in the thrill of her nerves that owned a human horror of this calamity, there was a fierce exhilaration of success in having triumphed over her enemy. But perhaps she had never wished, never thought, of so complete a triumph. The desire of revenge, which springs so naturally in the undisciplined mind, and is so hot and reckless in its efforts to harm its object, has most generally no fixed intention, but only a vague wish to injure, or, rather, punish; for Russell, to her own consciousness, was inspired by the highest moral sentiment, and meant only to bring retribution on the wicked and to open the eyes of a man who was deceived. She did not understand what had really occurred, but the fact that she had ruined her mistress was at the same time terrible and delightful to her. She did not mean so much as that; but no doubt Madam had been found out more wicked than was supposed, and her heart swelled with pride and a gratified sense of importance even while she trembled. But the consequences to herself were such as she had never foreseen, and for the moment overwhelmed her altogether. She wept hysterically as she hurried to the village, stumbling over the inequalities of the path, wild with sorrow and anger. She had meant to remain in Madam’s service, though she had done all she could to destroy her. She thought nothing less than that life would go on without much visible alteration, and that she herself, because there was nobody like her, would necessarily remain with the children to whom her care was indispensable. She had brought them all up from their birth. She had devoted herself to them, and felt her right in them almost greater than their mother’s. “My children,” she said, as the butler said “my plate,” and the housemaid “my grates and carpets.” She spent her whole life with them, whereas it is only a part of hers that the most devoted mother can give. The woman, though she was cruel and hard-hearted in one particular, was in this as tender and sensitive as the most gentle and feminine of women. She loved the children with passion. The idea that they could be torn away from her had never entered her mind. What would they do without her? The two little ones were delicate: they required constant care; without her own attention she felt sure they never could be “reared:” and to be driven from them at a moment’s notice, without time to say good-bye! Sobs came from her breast, convulsive and hysterical, as she rushed along. “Oh, my children!” she cried, under her breath, as if it were she who had been robbed, and who refused to be comforted. She passed some one on the way, who stopped astonished, to look after her, but whom she could scarcely see through the mist of her tears, and at last, with a great effort, subduing the passionate sounds that had been bursting from her, she hurried through the nearest corner of the village to her mother’s house, and there, flinging herself down upon a chair, gave herself up to all the violence of that half-artificial, half-involuntary transport known as hysterics. Her mother was old, and beyond such violent emotions; but though greatly astonished, she was not unacquainted with the manifestation. She got up from the big chair in which she was seated, tottering a little, and hurried to her daughter, getting hold of and smoothing out her clinched fingers. “Dear, dear, now, what be the matter?” she said, soothingly; “Sarah, Sarah, come and look to your poor sister. What’s come to her, what’s come to her, the poor dear? Lord bless us, but she do look bad. Fetch a drop of brandy, quick; that’s the best thing to bring her round.”

When Russell had been made to swallow the brandy, and had exhausted herself and brought her mother and sister into accord with her partial frenzy, she permitted herself to be brought round. She sat up wildly while still in their hands, and stared about her as if she did not know where she was. Then she seized her mother by the arm; “I have been sent away,” she said.

“Sent away. She’s off of her head still, poor dear! Sent away, when they can’t move hand nor foot without you!”

“That’s not so now, mother. It’s all true. I’ve been all the same as turned out of the house, and by her as I nursed and thought of most of all; her as was like my very own; Miss Rosalind! Oh!” and Russell showed inclination to “go off” again, which the assistants resisted by promptly taking possession of her two arms, and opening the hands which she would have clinched if she could.

“There now, deary; there now! don’t you excite yourself. You’re among them that wishes you well here.”

“Oh, I know that, mother. But Miss Rosalind, she’s as good as taken me by the shoulders and put me out of the house, and took my children from me as I’ve brought up; and what am I to do without my babies? Oh, oh! I wish I had never been born.”

“I hope you’ve got your wages and board wages, and something over to make up? You ought to have that,” said the sister, who was a woman of good sense. Russell, indeed, had sufficient command of herself to nod in assent.

“And your character safe?” said the old woman. “I will say that for you, deary, that you have always been respectable. And whatever it is that’s happened, so long as it’s nothing again your character, you’ll get another place fast enough. I don’t hold with staying too long in one family. You’d just like to stick there forever.”

“Oh, don’t speak to me about new places. My children as I’ve brought up! It has nothing to do with me; it’s all because I told master of Madam’s goings-on. And he’s been and put her away in his will—and right too. And Miss Rosalind, that always was unnatural, that took to that woman more than to her aunt, or me, or any one, she jumps up to defend Madam, and ‘go out of the house, woman!’ and stamping with her foot, and going on like a fury. And my little Master Johnny, that would never go to nobody but me! Oh, mother, I’ll die of it, I’ll die of it—my children that I’ve brought up!”

“I’ve told you all,” said the old woman, “never you meddle with the quality. It can’t come to no good.” She had given up her ministrations, seeing that her patient had come round, and retired calmly to her chair. “Madam’s goings-on was no concern of yours. You ought to have known that. When a poor person puts herself in the way of a rich person, it’s always her as goes to the wall.”

Of these maxims the mother delivered herself deliberately as she sat twirling her thumbs. The sister, who was the mistress of the cottage, showed a little more sympathy.

“As long as you’ve got your board wages,” she said, “and a somethin’ to make up. Mother’s right enough, but I’ll allow as it’s hard to do. They’re all turned topsy-turvy at the Red Lion about Madam’s young man—him as all this business was about.”

“What’s about him?” cried Russell, for the first time with real energy raising her head.

“It turns out as he’s robbed his masters in Liverpool,” said Sarah, with the perfect coolness of a rustic spectator; “just what was to be expected; and the detectives is after him. He was here yesterday, I’ll take my oath, but now he’s gone, and there’s none can find him. There’s a reward of—”

“I’ll find him,” cried Russell, springing to her feet. “I’ll track him. I’m good for nothing now in a common way. I cannot rest, I cannot settle to needlework or that sort.” She was fastening her cloak as she spoke, and tying on her bonnet. “I’ve heaps of mending to do, for I never had a moment’s time to think of myself, but only of them that have showed no more gratitude— My heart’s broke, that’s what it is— I can’t settle down; but here’s one thing I’m just in a humor to do— I’ll track him out.”

“Lord, Lizzie! what are you thinking of it? You don’t know no more than Adam what way they’re gone, or aught about him.”

“And if you’ll take my advice, deary,” said the old woman, “you’ll neither make nor meddle with the quality. Right or wrong, it’s always the poor folk as go to the wall.”

“I’ll track him, that’s what I’ll do. I’m just in the humor for that,” cried Russell, savagely. “Don’t stop me. What do I care for a bit of money to prove as I’m right. I’ll go and I’ll find them. Providence will put me on the right way. Providence’ll help me to find all that villainy out.”

“But, Lizzie! stop and have a bit to eat at least. Don’t go off like that, without even a cup of tea—”

“Oh, don’t speak to me about cups of tea!” Russell rushed at her mother and dabbed a hurried kiss upon her old cheek. She waved her hand to her sister, who stood open-mouthed, wondering at her, and finally rushed out in an excitement and energy which contrasted strangely with her previous prostration. The two rustic spectators stood gazing after her with consternation. “She was always one as had no patience,” said the mother at last. “And without a bit of dinner or a glass of beer, or anything,” said Sarah. After that they returned to their occupations and closed the cottage door.

Russell rushed forth to the railway station, which was at least a mile from the village. She was transported out of herself with excitement, misery, a sense of wrong, a sense of remorse—all the conflicting passions which the crisis had brought. To prove to herself that her suspicions were justified about Madam was in reality as strong a motive in her mind as the fierce desire of revenge upon her mistress, which drove her nearly frantic; and she had that wild confidence in chance, and indifference to reason, which are at once the strength and weakness of the uneducated. She would get on the track somehow; she would find them somehow; Madam’s young man, and Madam herself. She would give him up to justice, and shame the woman for whose sake she had been driven forth. And, as it happened, Russell, taking her ticket for London, found herself in the same carriage with the man who had come in search of the stranger at the Red Lion, and acquired an amount of information and communicated a degree of zeal which stimulated the search on both sides. When they parted in town she was provided with an address to which to telegraph instantly on finding any trace of the fugitives, and flung herself upon the great unknown world of London with a faith and a virulence which were equally violent. She did not know where to go nor what to do; she had very little acquaintance with London. The Trevanions had a town house in a street near Berkeley Square, and all that she knew was the immediate neighborhood of that dignified centre—of all places in the world least likely to shelter the fugitives. She went there, however, in her helplessness, and carried consternation to the bosom of the charwoman in charge, who took in the strange intelligence vaguely, and gaped and hoped as it wasn’t true. “So many things is said, and few of ’em ever comes true,” this philosophical observer said. “But I’ve come out of the middle of it, and I know it’s true, every word,” she almost shrieked in her excitement. The charwoman was a little hard of hearing. “We’ll hope as it’ll all turn out lies—they mostly does,” she said. This was but one of many rebuffs the woman met with. She had spent more than a week wandering about London, growing haggard and thin; her respectable clothes growing shabby, her eyes wild—the want of proper sleep and proper food making a hollow-eyed spectre of the once smooth and dignified upper servant—when she was unexpectedly rewarded for all her pangs and exertions by meeting Jane one morning, sharply and suddenly, turning round a corner. The two women paused by a mutual impulse, and then one cried, “What are you doing here?” and the other, grasping her firmly by the arm, “I’ve caught you at last.”

“Caught me! Were you looking for me? What do you want? Has anything happened to the children?” Jane cried, beginning to tremble.

“The children! how dare you take their names in your mouth, you as is helping to ruin and shame them? I’ll not let you go now I’ve got you; oh, don’t think it! I’ll stick to you till I get a policeman.”

“A policeman to me!” cried poor Jane, who, not knowing what mysterious powers the law might have, trembled more and more. “I’ve done nothing,” she said.

“But them as you are with has done a deal,” cried Russell. “Where is that young man? Oh, I know— I know what he’s been and done. I have took an oath on my Bible that I’ll track him out. If I’m to be driven from my place and my dear children for Madam’s sake, she shall just pay for it, I can tell you. You thought I’d put up with it and do nothing, but a worm will turn. I’ve got it in my power to publish her shame, and I’ll do it. I know a deal more than I knew when I told master of her goings-on. But now I’ve got you I’ll stick to you, and them as you’re with, and I’ll have my revenge,” Russell cried, her wild eyes flaming, her haggard cheeks flushing; “I’ll have my revenge. Ah!”

She paused here with a cry of consternation, alarm, dismay, for there stepped out of a shop hard by, Madam herself, and laid a hand suddenly upon her arm.

“Russell,” she said, “I am sorry they have sent you away. I know you love the children.” At this a convulsive movement passed across her face, which sent through the trembling, awe-stricken woman a sympathetic shudder. They were one in this deprivation, though they were enemies. “You have always hated me, I do not know why: but you love the children. I would not have removed you from them. I have written to Miss Rosalind to bid her have you back when—when she is calmer. And you that have done me so much harm, what do you want with me?” said Madam, looking with the pathetic smile which threw such a strange light upon her utterly pale face, upon this ignorant pursuer.

“I’ve come— I’ve come”—she gasped, and then stood trembling, unable to articulate, holding herself up by the grasp she had taken with such different intentions of Jane’s arm, and gazing with her hollow eyes with a sort of fascination upon the lady whom at last she had hunted down.

“I think she is fainting,” Madam said. “Whatever she wants, she has outdone her strength.” There was a compassion in the tone, which, in Russell’s weakened state, went through and through her. Her mistress took her gently by the other arm, and led her into the shop she had just left. Here they brought her wine and something to eat, of which she had the greatest need. “My poor woman,” said Madam, “your search for me was vain, for Mr. John Trevanion knows where to find me at any moment. You have done me all the harm one woman could do another; what could you desire more? But I forgive you for my children’s sake. Go back, and Rosalind will take you again, because you love them; and take care of my darlings, Russell,” she said, with that ineffable smile of anguish; “say no ill to them of their mother.”

“Oh, Madam, kill me!” Russell cried.

That was the last that was seen in England of Madam Trevanion. The woman, overcome with passion, remorse, and long fasting and misery, fainted outright at her mistress’s feet. And when she came to herself the lady and her maid were both gone, and were seen by her no more.

CHAPTER XXVI

There is nothing more strange in all the experiences of humanity than the manner in which a great convulsion either in nature or in human history ceases after a while to affect the world. Grass grows and flowers wave over the soil which an earthquake has rent asunder; and the lives of men are similarly torn in twain without leaving a much more permanent result. The people whom we see one year crushed by some great blow, when the next has come have begun to pursue their usual course again. This means no infidelity of nature, no forgetting; but only the inevitable progress by which the world keeps going. There is no trouble, however terrible, that does not yield to the touch of time.

Some two years after these events Rosalind Trevanion felt herself, almost against her will, emerging out of the great shadow which had overwhelmed her life. She had been for a time swallowed up in the needs of the family, all her powers demanded for the rearrangement of life on its new basis, and everything less urgent banished from her. But by degrees the most unnatural arrangements fall into the calm of habit, the most unlooked-for duties become things of every day. Long before the period at which this history resumes, it had ceased to be wonderful to any one that Rosalind should take her place as head of the desolated house. She assumed unconsciously that position of sister-mother which is one of the most touching and beautiful that exist, with the ease which necessity brings—not asking how she could do it, but doing it; as did the bystanders who criticise every course of action and dictate what can and what cannot be done, but who all accepted her in her new duties with a composure which soon made everybody forget how strange, how unlikely, to the girl those duties were. The disappearance of the mother, the breaking-up of the house, was no doubt a nine-days’ wonder, and gave occasion in the immediate district for endless discussions; but the wonder died out as every wonder dies out. Outside of the county it was but vaguely known, and to those who professed to tell the details with authority there was but a dull response; natural sentiment at a distance being all against the possibility that anything so extraordinary and odious could be true. “You may depend upon it, a woman who was going to behave so at the end must have shown signs of it from the beginning,” people said, and the propagation of the rumor was thus seriously discouraged. Mrs. Lennox, though she was not wise, had enough of good sense and good feeling not to tell even to her most intimate friends the circumstances of her sister-in-law’s disappearance; and this not so much for Madam’s sake as for that of her brother, whose extraordinary will appeared to her simple understanding so great a shame and scandal that she kept it secret for Reginald’s sake. Indeed, all she did in the matter was for Reginald’s sake. She did not entertain the confidence in Madam with which Rosalind and John enshrined the fugitive. To Rosalind, Mrs. Lennox said little on the subject, with a respect for the girl’s innocence which persons of superior age and experience are not always restrained by; but that John, a man who knew the world, should go on as he did, was a thing which exasperated his sister. How he could persuade himself of Mrs. Trevanion’s innocence was a thing she could not explain. Why, what could it be? she asked herself, angrily. Everybody knows that the wisest of men or women are capable of going wrong for one cause; but what other could account for the flight of a woman, of a mother from her children, the entire disappearance of her out of all the scenes of her former life? When her brother told her that there was no help for it, that in the interests of her children Madam was compelled to go away, Aunt Sophy said “Stuff!” What was a woman good for if she could not find some means of eluding such a monstrous stipulation? “Do you think I would have minded him? I should have disguised myself, hidden about, done anything rather than desert my family,” she cried; and when it was suggested to her that Madam was too honorable, too proud, too high-minded to deceive, Sophy said nothing but “Stuff!” again. “Do you think anything in the world would make me abandon my children—if I had any?” she cried. But though she was angry with John and impatient of Rosalind, she kept the secret. And after a time all audible comments on the subject died away. “There is something mysterious about the matter,” people said; “I believe Mrs. Trevanion is still living.” And then it began to be believed that she was ill and obliged to travel for her health, which was the best suggestion that could have been made.