“I didn’t dreamed it,” said Johnny. “It was a beautiful lady. She came in there, and stood here. I want her to come again,” the child said, gazing about him with his great eyes.
“But it is impossible, Miss Rosalind,” said the nurse; “the door is locked, and there is no lady. He just must have been dreaming. He is a little upset with the accident.”
“We wasn’t a bit upsetted,” said Johnny. “I could have doned it myself. I wanted to tell the lady, Rosy, but she only said, ‘Go to sleep.’”
“That was the very wisest thing she could say. Go to sleep, and I will sit by you,” said Rosalind.
It was some time, however, before Johnny accomplished the feat of going to sleep. He was very talkative and anxious to fight his battles over again, and explain exactly how he would have “doned” it. When the little eyes closed at last, and all was still, Rosalind found the nurse waiting in the outer room in some anxiety.
“Yes, Miss Rosalind, I am sure he was off his head a little—not to call wandering, but just a little off his head. For how could any lady have got into this room? It is just his imagination. I had once a little boy before who was just the same, always seeing ladies and people whenever he was the least excited. I will give him a dose in the morning, and if he sees her again I would just send for the doctor. It is all physical, miss, them sort of visions,” said the nurse, who was up to the science of her time.
CHAPTER XLIV.
Mrs. Lennox’s cure went on through the greater part of the month of September, and the friendship that had been begun so successfully grew into intimacy perhaps in a shorter time than would have been credible had the conditions of life been less easy. In the space of two or three days Mr. Everard had become almost a member of Mrs. Lennox’s party. He dined with them two evenings out of three. He walked by the elder lady’s chair when she went to her bath, he was always ready to give her his arm when she wished it, to help her to her favorite seat in the garden, to choose a place for her from which she could most comfortably hear the music. All these services to herself Aunt Sophy was quite aware were the price the young man paid for permission to approach Rosalind, to admire and address her, to form part of her surroundings, and by degrees to become her almost constant companion. Mrs. Lennox agreed with Mr. Ruskin that this sort of apprenticeship in love was right and natural. If in spite of all these privileges he failed to please, she would have been sorry for him indeed, but would not have felt that he had any right to complain. It was giving him his chance like another; and she was of opinion that a lover or two on hand was a cheerful thing for a house. In the days of Messrs. Hamerton and Rivers the effect had been very good, and she had liked these unwearied attendants, these unpaid officers of the household, who were always ready to get anything or do anything that might happen to be wanted. It was lonely to be without one of those hangers-on, and she accepted with a kind of mild enthusiasm the young man who had begun his probation by so striking an exhibition of his fitness for the post. It may be objected that her ready reception of a stranger without any introduction or guarantee of his position was imprudent in the extreme, for who could undertake that Rosalind might not accept this suitor with more ready sympathy than she had shown for the others? And there can be no doubt that this was the case; but as a matter of fact Mrs. Lennox was not prudent, and it was scarcely to be expected that she should exercise a virtue unfamiliar to her in respect to the young man who had, as she loved to repeat, saved the lives of the children. He was one of the Essex Everards, she made no doubt. She had always forgotten to ask him, and as, she said, they had never got upon the subject of his family, he had said nothing to her about them. But there was nothing wonderful in that. It is always pleasant when a young man does talk about his people, and lets you know how many brothers and sisters he has, and all the family history, but a great many young men don’t do so, and there was nothing at all wonderful about it in this case. A young man who is at Aix for the baths, who has been at most places where the travelling English go, who can talk like other people about Rome and Florence, not to speak of a great many out-of-the-way regions—it would be ridiculous to suppose that he was not “of our own class.” Even Aunt Sophy’s not very fastidious taste detected a few wants about him. He was not quite perfect in all points in his manners; he hesitated when a man in society would not have hesitated. He had not been at any university, nor even at a public school. All these things, however, Mrs. Lennox accounted for easily—when she took the trouble to think of them at all—by the supposition that he had been brought up at home, most likely in the country. “Depend upon it, he is an only child,” she said to Rosalind, “and he has been delicate—one can see that he is delicate still—and they have brought him up at home. Well, perhaps it is wrong—at least, all the gentlemen say so; but if I had an only child I think I should very likely do the same, and I am sure I feel very much for his poor mother. Why? Oh, because I don’t think he is strong, Rosalind. He colors like a girl when he makes any little mistake. He is not one of your bold young men that have a way of carrying off everything. He does make little mistakes, but then that is one of the things that is sure to happen when you bring boys up at home.”
Rosalind, who became more and more inclined as the days went on to take the best view of young Everard’s deficiencies, accepted very kindly this explanation. It silenced finally, she believed, that chill and horrible doubt, that question which she had put to herself broadly when she saw him first, which she did not even insinuate consciously now, but which haunted her, do what she would. Was he, perhaps, not exactly a gentleman? No, she did not ask that now. No doubt Aunt Sophy (who sometimes hit upon the right explanation, though she could not be called clever) was right, and the secret of the whole matter was that he had been brought up at home. There could be no doubt that the deficiencies which had at first suggested this most awful of all questions became rather interesting than otherwise when you came to know him better. They were what might be called ignorances, self-distrusts, an unassured condition of mind, rather than deficiencies; and his blush over his “little mistakes,” as Mrs. Lennox called them, and the half-uttered apology and the deprecatory look, took away from a benevolent observer all inclination towards unkindly criticism. Mrs. Lennox, who soon became “quite fond of” the young stranger, told him frankly when he did anything contrary to the code of society, and he took such rebukes in the very best spirit, but was unfortunately apt to forget and fall into the same blunder again. There were some of these mistakes which kept the ladies in amusement, and some which made Rosalind, as she became more and more “interested,” blush with hot shame—a far more serious feeling than that which made the young offender blush. For instance, when he found her sketch-book one morning, young Everard fell into ecstasies over the sketch Rosalind had been making of the lake on that eventful afternoon which had begun their intercourse. It was a very bad sketch, and Rosalind knew it. That golden sheet of water, full of light, full of reflections, with the sun blazing upon it, and the hills rising up on every side, and the sky looking down into its depths, had become a piece of yellow mud with daubs of blue and brown here and there, and the reeds in the foreground looked as if they had been cut out of paper and pasted on. “Don’t look at it. I can’t do very much, but yet I can do better than that,” she had said, finding him in rapt contemplation of her unsatisfactory performance, and putting out her hand to close the book. He looked up at her, for he was seated by the table, hanging over the sketch with rapture, with the most eager deprecation.
“I think it is lovely,” he said; “don’t try to take away my enjoyment. I wonder how any one can turn a mere piece of paper into a picture!”