In Mrs. Lennox’s sitting-room up-stairs, which was so well lighted, so fully occupied, with large windows opening upon the garden, and white curtains fluttering at the open windows, a very agitated group was assembled. Mrs. Lennox was seated at a distance from the table, with her white handkerchief in her hand, with which now and then she wiped off a few tears. Sometimes she would throw a word into the conversation that was going on, but for the most part confined herself to passive remonstrances and appeals, lifting up now her hands, now her eyes, to heaven. It was half because she was so overcome by her feelings that Mrs. Lennox took so little share in what was going on, and half because her brother had taken the management of this crisis off her hands. She did not think that he showed much mastery of the situation, but she yielded it to him with a great and consolatory consciousness that, whatever should now happen, she could not be held as the person to blame.
Rosalind’s story was that which the reader already knows, with the addition of another extracted from little Amy, who had one of those wonderful tales of childish endurance and silence which seem scarcely credible, yet occur so often, to tell. For many nights past, Amy, clinging to her sister, with her face hidden on Rosalind’s shoulder, declared that she had seen the same figure steal in. She had never clearly seen the face, but the child had been certain from the first that it was mamma. Mamma had gone to Johnny first, and then had come to her own little bed, where she stood for a moment before she disappeared. Johnny’s outcry had been always, Amy said, after the figure disappeared, but she had seen it emerge from out of the dimness, and glide away, and by degrees this mystery had become the chief incident in her life. All this Rosalind repeated with tremulous eloquence; and excitement, as she stood before the two elder people, on her defence.
“But I saw her, Uncle John; what argument can be so strong as that? You have been moving about, you have not got your letters; and perhaps—perhaps—” cried Rosalind with tears—“perhaps it has happened only now, only to-night. A woman who was far from her children might come and see them—and see them,” she struggled to say through her sobs, “on her way to heaven.”
“Oh, Rosalind! it is a fortnight since it begun,” Mrs. Lennox said.
“Do people die in a moment?” cried Rosalind. “She may have been dying all this time; and perhaps when they thought her wandering in her mind it might be that she was here. Oh, my mother; who would watch over her, who would be taking care of her? and me so far away!”
John Trevanion sprang from his chair. It was intolerable to sit there and listen and feel the contagion of this excitement, which was so irrational, so foolish, gain his own being. Women take a pleasure in their own anguish, which a man cannot bear. “Rosalind,” he cried, “this is too terrible, you know. I cannot stand it if you can; I tell you, if anything had happened, I must have heard. All this is simply impossible. You have all got out of order, the children first, and their fancies have acted upon you.”
“It is their digestion, I always said so—or gout in the system,” said Aunt Sophy, lifting her handkerchief to her eyes.
“It is derangement of the brain, I think,” said John. “I see I must get you out of here; one of you has infected the other. Come, Rosalind, you have so much sense—let us see you make use of it.”
“Uncle John, what has sense to do with it? I have seen her,” Rosalind said.
“This is madness, Rosalind.”