Madam

When Mrs. Trevanion opened her eyes she smiled. John Trevanion stood by her on one side, Rosalind on the other. She had no lack of love, of sympathy, or friendship. She looked from between them over Amy’s bright head with a quivering of her lips. “Oh, no test, no test!” she said to herself. She had known how it would be. She withdrew her eyes from the boy standing gloomy in the doorway. She began to speak, and everybody but he made some unconscious movement of quickened attention. Rex did not give any sign, nor one other, standing behind, half hidden by the door.

“Sophy,” she said quietly, “I have always had the fullest trust in your kindness; and if I come to your house on Rosalind’s birthday that can hurt no one. This dreadful business has been going on too long—too long. Flesh and blood cannot bear it. I have grown very weak—in mind, I mean in mind. When I heard the children were near me I yielded to the temptation and went to look at them. And all this has followed. Perhaps it was wrong. My mind has got confused; I don’t know.”

“Oh, Grace, my dear, how could it be wrong to look at your little children, your own children, whom you were so cruelly, cruelly parted from?”

Mrs. Lennox began to cry. She adopted her sister-in-law’s cause in a moment, without hesitation or pause. Her different opinion before mattered nothing now. Mrs. Trevanion understood all and smiled, and looked up at John Trevanion, who stood by her with his hand upon the chair, very grave, his face full of pain, saying nothing. He was a friend whom she had never doubted, and yet was it not his duty to enforce the separation, as it had been his to announce it to her?

“I know,” she cried, “and I know what is your duty, John. Only I have a hope that something may come which will make it your duty no longer. But in the meantime I have changed my mind about many things. I thought it best before to go away without any explanations; I want now to tell you everything.”

Rosalind clasped her hand more closely. “Dear mother, what you please; but not because we want explanations,” she said, her eyes including the whole party in one high, defiant gaze.

“Oh no, dear, no. We want nothing but just to enjoy your society a little,” cried Mrs. Lennox. “Give dear Grace your arm, and bring her into the drawing-room, John. Explanations! No, no! If there is anything that is disagreeable let it just be forgotten. We are all friends now; indeed we have always been friends,” the good woman cried.

“I want to tell you how I left home,” Mrs. Trevanion said. She turned to her brother-in-law, who was stooping over the back of her chair, his face partially concealed. “John, you were right, yet you were all wrong. In those terrible evenings at Highcourt”—she gave a slight shudder—“I did indeed go night after night to meet—a man in the wood. When I went away I went with him, to make up to him—the man, poor boy! he was scarcely more than a boy—was—” She paused, her eye caught by a strange combination. It brought the keenest pang of misery to her heart, yet made her smile. Everard had been drawn by the intense interest of the scene into the room. He stood in the doorway close to young Rex, who leaned against it, looking out under the same lowering brows, in the same attitude of sullen resistance. She gazed at them for a moment with sad certainty, and yet a wonder never to be extinguished. “There,” she said, with a keen sharpness of anguish in her voice, “they stand together; look and you will see. My sons—both mine—and neither with anything in his heart that speaks for me!”

These words, and the unconscious group in the doorway, who were the only persons in the room unaffected by what was said, threw a sudden illumination upon the scene and the story and everything that had been. A strange thrill ran through the company as every individual turned round and gazed, and perceived, and understood. Mrs. Lennox gave a sudden cry, clasping her hands together, and Rosalind, who was holding Mrs. Trevanion’s hand, gave it such a sudden pressure, emphatic, almost violent, that the sufferer moved involuntarily with the pain. John Trevanion raised his head from where he had been leaning on her chair. He took in everything with a glance. Was it an older Rex, less assured, less arrogant, but not less determined to resist all softening influences? But the effect on John was not that of an explanation, but of an alarming, horrifying discovery. He withdrew from Mrs. Trevanion’s chair. A tempest of wonder and fear arose in his mind. The two in the doorway moved uneasily under the observation to which they were suddenly subjected. They gave each other a naturally defiant glance. Neither of them realized the revelation that had been made, not even Everard, though he knew it—not Rex, listening with jealous repugnance, resisting all the impulses of nature. Neither of them understood the wonderful effect that was produced upon the others by the sight of them standing side by side.

John Trevanion had suddenly taken up a new position; no one knew why he spoke in harsh, distinct tones, altogether unlike his usual friendly and gentle voice. “Let us know, now, exactly what this means; and, for God’s sake, no further concealment, no evasion. Speak out for that poor boy’s sake.”

There was surprise in Mrs. Trevanion’s eyes as she raised them to his face. “I have come to tell you everything,” she said.

“Sir,” said Jane, “my poor lady is far from strong. Before she says more and brings on one of her faints, let her rest—oh, let her rest.”

For once in his life John Trevanion had no pity. “Her faints,” he said; “does she faint? Bring wine, bring something; but I must understand this, whatever happens. It is a matter of life or death.”

“Uncle John,” said Rosalind, “I will not have her disturbed. Whatever there is amiss can be told afterwards. I am here to take care of her. She shall not do more than she is able for; no, not even for you.”

“Rosalind, are you mad? Don’t you see what hangs upon it? Reginald’s position—everything, perhaps. I must understand what she means. I must understand what that means.” John Trevanion’s face was utterly without color; he could not stand still—he was like a man on the rack. “I must know everything, and instantly; for how can she stay here, unless— She must not stay.”

This discussion, and his sharp, unhappy tone seemed to call Madam to herself.

“I did not faint,” she said, softly. “It is a mistake to call them faints. I never was unconscious; and surely, Rosalind, he has a right to know. I have come to explain everything.”

Roland Hamerton had been standing behind. He came close to Rosalind’s side. “Madam,” he said, “if you are not to stay here, wherever I have a house, wherever I can give you a shelter, it is yours; whatever I can do for you, from the bottom of my heart!”

Mrs. Trevanion opened her eyes, which had been closed. She shook her head very softly; and then she said almost in a whisper, “Rosalind, he is very good and honest and true. I should be glad if— And Amy, my darling! you must go and get dressed. You will catch cold. Go, my love, and then come back to me. I am ready, John. I want to make everything clear.”

Rosalind held her hand fast. She stood like a sentinel facing them all, her left hand clasping Mrs. Trevanion’s, the other free, as if in defence of her. And Roland stood close behind, ready to answer any call. He was of Madam’s faction against all the world, the crowd (as it seemed to these young people), before whom she was about to make her defence. These two wanted no defence; neither did Mrs. Lennox, standing in front, wringing her hands, with her honest face full of trouble, following everything that each person said. “She is more fit to be in her bed than anywhere else,” Mrs. Lennox was saying; “she is as white—as white as my handkerchief. Oh, John, you that are so reasonable, and that always was a friend to her—how can you be so cruel to her? She shall stay,” cried Aunt Sophy, with a sudden outburst, “in my house— I suppose it is my house—as long as she will consent to stay.”

Notwithstanding this, of all the people present, there was no one who in his heart had stood by her so closely as John Trevanion. But circumstances had so determined it that he must be her judge now. He made a pause, and then pointed to the doorway in which the two young men stood with a mutual scowl at each other. “Explain that,” he said, in sharp, staccato tones, “first of all.”

“Yes, John, I will explain,” Mrs, Trevanion said, with humility. “When I met my husband first—” She paused as if to take breath—“I was married, and I had a child. I feel no shame now,” she went on, yet with a faint color rising over her paleness. “Shame is over for me; I must tell my story without evasion, as you say. It is this, John. I thought I was a deserted wife, and my boy had a right to his name. The same ship that brought Reginald Trevanion brought the news that I was deceived. I was left in a strange country without a friend—a woman who was no wife, with a child who had no father. I thought I was the most miserable of women; but now I know better. I know now—”

John’s countenance changed at once. What he had feared or suspected was never known to any of them; but his aspect changed; he tried to interrupt her, and, coming back to her side, took her other hand. “Grace,” he cried, “Grace! it is enough. I was a brute to think— Grace, my poor sister—”

“Thank you, John; but I have not done. Your father,” she went on, unconsciously changing, addressing another audience, “saw me, and heard my story. And he was sorry for me—oh, he was more than sorry. He was young and so was I. He proposed to me after a while that if I would give up my boy—and we had no living, nothing to keep us from starvation—and marry him, he would take care of the child; it should want for nothing, but that I must never see it more. For a long time I could not make up my mind. But poverty is very sharp; and how to get bread I knew not. The child was pining, and so was I. And I was young. I suppose,” she said in a low voice, drooping her head, “I still wished, still needed to be happy. That seems so natural when one is young. And your father loved me; and I him—and I him!”

She said these words very low, with a pause between. “There, you have all my story,” with a glimmer of a smile on her face. “It is a tragedy, but simple enough, after all. I was never to see the child again; but my heart betrayed me, and I deceived your father. I went and looked at my boy out of windows, waited to see him pass—once met him on a railway journey when you were with me, Rosalind—which was all wrong, wrong—oh, wrong on both sides; to your father and to him. I don’t excuse myself. Then, poor boy, he fell into trouble. How could he help it? His father’s blood was in him, and mine too—a woman false to my vow. He was without friend or home. When he was in great need and alarm, he came—was it not natural?—to his mother. What could be more natural? He sent for me to meet him, to help him, to tell him what to do. What could I do but go—all being so wrong, so wrong? Jane knows everything. I begged my poor boy to go away; but he was ignorant, he did not know the danger. And then Russell, you know, who had never loved me—is she there, poor woman?—found us out. She carried this story to your father. You think, and she thinks,” said Mrs. Trevanion, raising herself with great dignity in her chair, “that my husband suspected me of—of— I cannot tell what shameful suspicions. Reginald,” she went on, with a smile half scornful, “had no such thought. He knew me better. He knew I went to meet my son, and that I was risking everything for my son. He had vowed to me that in that case I should be cut off from him and his. Oh, yes, I knew it all. My eyes were open all the time. And he did what he had said.” She drew a long breath. There was a dispassionate sadness in her voice, as of winding up a history all past. “And what was I to do?” she resumed. “Cut off from all the rest, there was a chance that I might yet be of some use to him—my boy, whom I had neglected. Oh, John and Rosalind, I wronged you. I should have told you this before; but I had not the heart. And then, there was no time to lose, if I was to be of service to the boy.”

Everything was perfectly still in the room; no one had stirred; they were afraid to lose a word. When she had thus ended she made a pause. Her voice had been very calm, deliberate, a little feeble, with pauses in it. When she spoke again it took another tone; it was full of entreaty, like a prayer. She withdrew her hand from Rosalind.

“Reginald!” she said, “Rex! have you nothing to say to me, my boy!”

The direction of all eyes was changed and turned upon the lad. He stood very red, very lowering, without moving from his post against the door. He did not look at her. After a moment he began to clear his voice. “I don’t know,” he said, “what there is to say.” Then, after another pause: “I suppose I am expected to stick to my father’s will. I suppose that’s my duty.”

“But for all that,” she said, with a pleading which went to every heart; her eyes filled, which had been quite dry, her mouth quivered with a tender smile—“for all that, oh, my boy! it is not to take me in, to make a sacrifice; but for once speak to me, come to me; I am your mother, Rex.”

Sophy had been behind the curtain all the time, wrapped in it, peering out with her restless, dancing eyes. She was still only a child. Her little bosom had begun to ache with sobs kept in, her face to work, her mind to be moved by impulses beyond her power. She had tried to mould herself upon Rex, until Rex, with the shadow of the other beside him, holding back, repelling, resisting, became contemptible in Sophy’s keen eyes. It was perhaps this touch of the ridiculous that affected her sharp mind more than anything else; and the sound of her mother’s voice, as it went on speaking, was more than nature could bear, and roused impulses she scarcely understood within her. She resisted as long as she could, winding herself up in the curtain; but at these last words Sophy’s bonds were loosed; she shook herself out of the drapery and came slowly forward, with eyes glaring red out of her pale face.

“They say,” she said suddenly, “that we shall lose all our money, mamma, if we go to you.”

Mrs. Trevanion’s fortitude and calm had given way. She was not prepared for this trial. She turned towards the new voice and held out her arms without a word. But Sophy stood frightened, reluctant, anxious, her keen eyes darting out of her head.

“And what could I do?” she cried. “I am only a little thing, I couldn’t work. If you gave up your baby because of being poor, what should we do, Rex and I? We are younger, though you said you were young. We want to be well off, too. If we were to go to you, everything would be taken from us!” cried Sophy. “Mamma, what can we do?”

Mrs. Trevanion turned to her supporters on either side of her with a smile; her lips still trembled. “Sophy was always of a logical mind,” she said, with a faint half-laugh. The light was flickering round her, blackness coming where all these eager faces were. “I—I have my answer. It is just enough. I have no—complaint.”

There was a sudden outcry and commotion where all had been so still before. Jane came from behind the chair and swept away, with that command which knowledge gives, the little crowd which had closed in around. “Air! air is what she wants, and to be quiet! Go away, for God’s sake, all but Miss Rosalind!”

John Trevanion hurried to open the window, and the faithful servant wheeled the chair close to it in which her mistress lay. Just then two other little actors came upon the scene. Amy had obeyed her mother literally. She had gone and dressed with that calm acceptance of all wonders which is natural to childhood; then sought her little brother at play in the nursery. “Come and see mamma,” she said. Without any surprise, Johnny obeyed. He had his whip in his hand, which he flourished as he came into the open space which had been cleared round that chair.

“Where’s mamma?” said Johnny. His eyes sought her among the people standing about. When his calm but curious gaze found out the fainting figure he shook his hand free from that of Amy, who led him. “That!” he said, contemptuously; “that’s not mamma, that’s the lady.”

Against the absolute certainty of his tone there was nothing to be said.

CHAPTER LXIII

Rivers had stood listening all through this strange scene, he scarcely knew why. He was roused now to the inappropriateness of his presence here. What had he to do in the midst of a family tragedy with which he had no connection? His heart contracted with one sharp spasm of pain. He had no connection with the Trevanions. He looked round him, half contemptuous of himself, for some one of whom he could take leave before he closed the door of this portion of his life behind him, and left it forever. There was no one. All the different elements were drawn together in the one central interest with which the stranger had nothing to do. Rivers contemplated the group around Mrs. Trevanion’s chair as if it had been a picture. The drama was over, and all had resolved itself into stillness, whether the silence of death, or a pause only and interruption of the continuity, he could not tell. He looked round him, unconsciously receiving every detail into his mind. This was what he had given a year of his life for, to leave this household with which he had so strongly identified himself without even a word of farewell and to see them no more. He lingered only for a moment, the lines of the picture biting themselves in upon his heart. When he felt it to be so perfect that no after-experience could make it dim he went away; Roland Hamerton followed him to the door. Hamerton, on his side, very much shaken by the agitating scene, to which his inexperience knew no parallel, was eager to speak to some one, to relieve his heart.

“Do you think she is dead?” he said under his breath.

“Death, in my experience, rarely comes so easily,” Rivers replied. After a pause he added, “I am going away to-night. I suppose you remain?”

“If I can be of any use. You see I have known them all my life.”

“There you have the advantage of me,” said the other, sharply, with a sort of laugh. “I have given them only a year of mine. Good-bye, Hamerton. Our way—does not lie the same—”

“Good-bye,” said Roland, taken by surprise, and stopping short, though he had not meant to do so. Then he called after him with a kindly impulse, “We shall be sure to hear of you. Good luck! Good-bye.”

Good luck! The words seemed an insult; but they were not so meant. Rivers sped on, never looking back. At the gate he made up to Everard, walking with his head down and his hands in his pockets, in gloomy discomfiture. His appearance moved Rivers to a kind of inward laugh. There was no triumph, at least, in him.

“You have come away without knowing if your mother will live or die.”

“What’s the use of waiting on?” said young Everard. “She’ll be all right. They are only faints; all women have them; they are nothing to be frightened about.”

“I think they are a great deal to be frightened about—very likely she will never leave that house alive.”

“Oh, stuff!” Everard said; and then he added, half apologetically, “You don’t know her as I do.”

“Perhaps better than you do,” said Rivers; and then he added, as he had done to Hamerton, “Our ways lie in different directions. Good-bye. I am leaving Aix to-night.”

Everard looked after him, surprised. He had no good wishes to speak, as Roland had. A sense of pleasure at having got rid of an antagonist was in his mind. For his mind was of the calibre which is not aware when there comes an end. All life to him was a ragged sort of thread, going on vaguely, without any logic in it. He was conscious that a great deal had happened and that the day had been full of excitement; but how it was to affect his life he did not know.

Thus the three rivals parted. They had not been judged on their merits, but the competition was over. He who was nearest to the prize felt, like the others, his heart and courage very low; for he had not succeeded in what he had attempted; he had done nothing to bring about the happy termination; and whether even that termination was to be happy or not, as yet no one could say.

CHAPTER LXIV

Madam was conveyed with the greatest care and tenderness to the best room in the house, Mrs. Lennox’s own room, which it was a great satisfaction to that kind soul to give up to her, making the little sacrifice with joy.

“I have always thought what a nice room to be ill in—don’t you think it is a nice room, Grace?—and to get better in, my dear. You can step into the fresh air at once as soon as you are strong enough, and there is plenty of room for us all to come and sit with you; and, please God, we’ll soon have you well again and everything comfortable,” cried Mrs. Lennox, her easy tears flowing softly, her easy words rolling out like them. Madam accepted everything with soft thanks and smiles, and a quiet ending seemed to fall quite naturally to the agitated day. Rosalind spent the night by her mother’s bedside—the long, long night that seemed as if it never would be done. When at last it was over, the morning made everything more hopeful. A famous doctor, who happened to be in the neighborhood, came with a humbler brother from Aix and examined the patient, and said she had no disease—no disease—only no wish or intention of living. Rosalind’s heart bounded at the first words, but fell again at the end of the sentence, which these men of science said very gravely. As for Mrs. Trevanion, she smiled at them all, and made no complaint. All the day she lay there, sometimes lapsing into that momentary death which she would not allow to be called a faint, then coming back again, smiling, talking by intervals. The children did not tire her, she said. Little Johnny, accustomed to the thought that “the lady” was mamma, accepted it as quite simple, and, returning to his usual occupations, drove a coach and four made of chairs in her room, to her perfect satisfaction and his. The cracking of his whip did not disturb her. Neither did Amy, who sat on her bed, and forgot her troubles, and sang a sort of ditty, of which the burden was “Mamma has come back.” Sophy, wandering long about the door of the room, at last came in too, and standing at a distance, stared at her mother with those sharp, restless eyes of hers, like one who was afraid to be infected if she made too near an approach. And later in the afternoon Reginald came suddenly in, shamefaced and gloomy, and came up to the bed, and kissed her, almost without looking at her. At other times, Mrs. Trevanion was left alone with her brother-in-law and Rosalind, who understood her best, and talked to them with animation and what seemed to be pleasure.

“Rosalind will not see,” she said with a smile, “that there comes a time when dying is the most natural—the most easy way of settling everything—the most pleasant for every one concerned.” There was no solemnity in her voice, though now and then it broke, and there were pauses for strength. She was the only one of the three who was cheerful and at ease. “If I were so ill-advised as to live,” she added with a faint laugh, “nothing could be changed. The past, you allow, has become impossible, Rosalind; I could not go away again. That answered for once, but not again.”

“You would be with me, mother, or I with you; for I am free, you know—I am free now.”

Mrs. Trevanion shook her head. “John,” she said, “tell her; she is too young to understand of herself. Tell her that this is the only way to cut the knot—that it is the best way—the most pleasant—John, tell her.”

He was standing by with his head bent upon his breast. He made a hasty sign with his hand. He could not have spoken to save his own life, or even hers. It was all intolerable, past bearing. He stood and listened, with sometimes an outcry—sometimes, alas, a dreadful consent in his heart to what she said, but he could not speak.

The conviction that now is the moment to die, that death is the most natural, noble, even agreeable way of solving a great problem, and making the path clear not only for the individual most closely concerned, but for all around, is not unusual in life. Both in the greater historical difficulties, and in those which belong to private story, it appears often that this would be the better way. But the conviction is not always sufficient to carry itself out. Sometimes it will so happen that he or she in whose person the difficulty lies will so prevail over flesh and blood, so exalt the logic of the situation, as to attain this easy solution of the problem. But not in all cases does it succeed. Madam proved to be one of those who fail. Though she had so clearly made out what was expedient, and so fully consented to it, the force of her fine organization was such that she was constrained to live, and could not die.