The other strange, new sensations that Madam encountered in these years, while her little children throve and grew under the care of Mrs. Lennox, and Rosalind developed into the full bloom of early womanhood, were many and various. She had thought herself very well acquainted with the mysteries of human endurance, but it seemed to her now that at the beginning of that new life she had known nothing of them. New depths and heights developed every day; her own complete breaking down and the withdrawal from her of confidence in herself being the great central fact of all. On Edmund’s side the development too was great. He had looked and wished for pleasure and ease and self-indulgence when he had very little power of securing them. When by a change of fortune so extraordinary and unexpected he actually obtained the means of gratifying his instincts, he addressed himself to the task with a unity of purpose which was worthy of a greater aim. He was drawn aside from his end by no glimmer of ambition, no impulse to make something better out of his life. His imperfect education and ignorance of what was best in existence had perhaps something to do with this. To him, as to many a laboring man, the power of doing no work, nor anything but what he pleased, seemed the most supreme of gratifications. He would not give himself the trouble to study anything, even the world, confident as only the ignorant are in the power of money, and in that great evidence that he had become one of the privileged classes, the fact that he did not now need to do anything for his living. He was not absolutely bad or cruel; he only preferred his own pleasure to anybody else’s, and was a little contemptuous of a woman’s advice and intolerant of her rule and impatient of her company. Perhaps her idea that she owed herself to him, that it was paying an old debt of long-postponed duty to devote herself to him now, to do her best for him, to give him everything in her power that could make him happy, was a mistaken one from the beginning. She got to believe that she was selfish in remaining with him, while still feeling that her presence was the only possible curb upon him. How was she to find a way of serving him best, of providing for all his wants and wishes, of keeping him within the bounds of possibility, yet letting him be free from the constraint of her presence? As time went on, this problem became more and more urgent, yet by the same progress of time her mind grew less and less clear on any point. The balance of the comparative became more difficult to carry. There was no absolute good within her reach, and she would not allow even to herself that there was any absolute bad in the young man’s selfish life. It was all comparative, as life was. But to find the point of comparative advantage which should be best for him, where he should be free without being abandoned, and have the power of shaping his course as he pleased without the power of ruining himself and her—this became more and more the engrossing subject of her thoughts.
As for Edmund, though he indulged in many complaints and grumbles as to having always a woman at his heels, his impatience never went the length of emancipating himself. On the whole, his indolent nature found it most agreeable to have everything done for him, to have no occasion for thought. He had the power always of complaint, which gave him a kind of supremacy without responsibility. His fixed grievance was that he was kept out of London; his hope, varying as they went and came about the world, that somewhere they would meet the family from which Mrs. Trevanion had been torn, and that “on the sly,” or otherwise (though he never repeated those unlucky words), he might find himself in a position to approach Rosalind. In the meantime he amused himself in such ways as were practicable, and spent a great deal of money, and got a certain amount of pleasure out of his life. His health was not robust, and when late hours and amusements told upon him he had the most devoted of nurses. On the whole, upon comparison with the life of a clerk on a small salary in a Liverpool office, his present existence was a sort of shabby Paradise.
About the time when Rosalind heard from Mr. Rivers of that chance encounter which revived all her longings for her mother, and at the same time all the horror of vague and miserable suspicion which surrounded Mrs. Trevanion’s name, a kind of crisis had occurred in this strange, wandering life. Edmund had fallen ill, more seriously than before, and in the quiet of convalescence after severe suffering had felt certain compunctions cross his mind. He had acknowledged to his tender nurse that she was very kind to him. “If you would not nag a fellow so,” he said, “and drive me about so that I don’t know what I am doing, I think, now that I am used to your ways, we might get on.”
Mrs. Trevanion did not defend herself against the charge of “nagging” or “driving” as she might perhaps have done at an earlier period, but accepted with almost grateful humility the condescension of this acknowledgment. “In the meantime,” she said, “you must get well, and then, please God, everything will be better.”
“If you like to make it so,” he said, already half repentant of the admission he had made. And then he added, “If you’d only give up this fancy of yours for foreign parts. Why shouldn’t we go home? You may like it, you speak the language, and so forth: but I detest it. If you want to please me and make me get well, let’s go home.”
“We have no home to go to, Edmund—”
“Oh, that’s nonsense, you know. You don’t suppose I mean the sort of fireside business. Nothing is so easy as to get a house in London; and you know that is what I like best.”
“Edmund, how could I live in a house in London?” she said. “You must remember that a great deal has passed that is very painful. I could not but be brought in contact with people who used to know me—”
“Ah!” he cried, “here’s the real reason at last. I thought all this time it was out of consideration for me, to keep me out of temptation, and that sort of thing; but now it crops up at last. It’s for yourself, after all. It is always an advance to know the true reason. And what could they do to you, those people with whom you might be brought in contact?”
She would not perhaps have said anything about herself had he not beguiled her by the momentary softness of his tone. And now one of those rapid scintillations of cross light which were continually gleaming upon her life and motives flashed over her and changed everything. To be sure! it was selfishness, no doubt, though she had not seen it so. She answered, faltering a little: “They could do nothing to me. Perhaps you are right, Edmund. It may be that I have been thinking too much of myself. But I am sure London would not be good for you. To live there with comfort you must have something to do, or you must have—friends—”