“I think,” said Rosalind, quickly, “that you forget yourself, Mr. Everard. A gentleman, if he has anything to tell, does not make bargains. What is it, about some one, whom you say I love—” She began to tremble very much, and put her hands together in an involuntary prayer! “Oh, if it should be—Mr. Everard! I will thank you all my life if you will tell me—”
“Promise me you will listen to me, Rosalind; promise me! I don’t want your thanks; I want your—love. I have been after you for a long, long time; oh, before anything happened. Promise me—”
He put out his hands to clasp hers, but this was more than she could bear. She recoiled from him, with an unconscious revelation of her distaste, almost horror, of these advances, which stung his self-esteem. “You won’t!” he cried, hoarsely; “I am to give everything and get nothing? Then I won’t neither, and that is enough for to-night—”
He had got on the gravel again, in his sudden, angry step backward, and turned on his heel, crushing the pebbles with a sound that seemed to jar through all the atmosphere. After he had gone a few steps he paused, as if expecting to be called back. But Rosalind’s heart was all aflame. She said to herself, indignantly, that to believe such a man had anything to tell her was folly, was a shame to think of, was impossible. To chaffer and bargain with him, to promise him anything—her love, oh Heaven! how dared he ask it?—was intolerable. She turned away with hot, feminine impulse, and a step in which there was no pause or wavering; increasing the distance between them at a very different rate from that achieved by his lingering steps. It seemed that he expected to be recalled after she had disappeared altogether and hidden herself, panting, among the shadows; for she could still hear his step pause with that jar and harsh noise upon the gravel for what seemed to her, in her excitement, an hour of suspense. And Rosalind’s heart jarred, as did all the echoes. Harsh vibrations of pain went through and through it. The rending away of her own self-illusion in respect to him, which was not unmingled with a sense of guilt—for that illusion had been half voluntary, a fiction of her own creating, a refuge of the imagination from other thoughts—and at the same time a painful sense of his failure, and proof of the floating doubt and fear which had always been in her mind on his account, wounded and hurt her with almost a physical reality of pain. And what was this suggestion, cast into the midst of this whirlpool of agitated and troubled thought?—“I could tell you; I could make it easy for you to see; I could clear up—” What? oh what, in the name of Heaven! could he mean?
She did not know how long she remained pondering these questions, making a circuitous round through the grounds, under the shadows, until she got back again, gliding noiselessly to the veranda, from which she could dart into the house at any return of her unwelcome suitor. But she still stood there after all had relapsed into the perfect silence of night in such a place. The tourists in the boat had rowed to the beach and disembarked, and disappeared on their way home. The evening breeze dropped altogether and ceased to move the trees, while she still stood against the trellis-work scarcely visible in the gloom, wondering, trying to think, trying to satisfy the questions that arose in her mind, with a vague sense that if she but knew what young Everard meant, there might be in it some guide, some clue to the mystery which weighed upon her soul. But this was not all that Rosalind was to encounter. While she stood thus gazing out from her with eyes that noted nothing, yet could not but see, she was startled by something, a little wandering shadow, not much more substantial than her dreams, which flitted across the scene before her. Her heart leaped up with a pang of terror. What was it? When the idea of the supernatural has once gained admission into the mind the mental perceptions are often disabled in after-emergencies. Her strength abandoned her. She covered her eyes with her hands, with a rush of the blood to her head, a failing of all her powers. Something white as the moonlight flitting across the moonlight, a movement, a break in the stillness of nature. When she looked up again there was nothing to be seen. Was there nothing to be seen? With a sick flutter of her heart, searching the shadows round with keen eyes, she had just made sure that there was nothing on the terrace, when a whiteness among the shrubs drew her eyes farther down. Her nerves, which had played her false for a moment, grew steady again, though her heart beat wildly. There came a faint sound like a footstep, which reassured her a little. In such circumstances sound is salvation. She herself was a sight to have startled any beholder, as timidly, breathlessly, under the impulse of a visionary terror, she came out, herself all white, into the whiteness of the night. She called “Is there any one there?” in a very tremulous voice. No answer came to her question; but she could now see clearly the other moving speck of whiteness, gliding on under the dark trees, emerging from the shadows, on to a little point of vision from which the foliage had been cleared a little farther down. It stood there for a moment, whiteness on whiteness, the very embodiment of a dream. A sudden idea flashed into Rosalind’s mind, relieving her brain, and, without pausing a moment, she hurried down the path, relieved from one fear only to be seized by another. She reached the little ghost as it turned from that platform to continue the descent. The whiteness of the light had stolen the color out of the child’s hair. She was like a little statue in alabaster, her bare feet, her long, half-curled locks, the folds of her nightdress, all softened and rounded in the light. “Amy!” cried Rosalind—but Amy did not notice her sister. Her face had the solemn look of sleep, but her eyes were open. She went on unconscious, going forward to some visionary end of her own from which no outward influence could divert her. Rosalind’s terror was scarcely less great than when she thought it an apparition. She followed, with her heart and her head both throbbing, the unconscious little wanderer. Amy went down through the trees and shrubs to the very edge of the lake, so close that Rosalind behind hovered over her, ready at the next step to seize upon her, her senses coming back, but her mind still confused, in her perplexity not knowing what to do. Then there was for a moment a breathless pause. Amy turned her head from side to side, as if looking for some one; Rosalind seated herself on a stone to wait what should ensue. It was a wonderful scene. The dark trees waved overhead, but the moon, coming down in a flood of silver, lit up all the beach below. It might have been an allegory of a mortal astray, with a guardian angel standing close, watching, yet with no power to save. The water moving softly with its ceaseless ripple, the soft yet chill air of night rustling in the leaves, were the only things that broke the stillness. The two human figures in the midst seemed almost without breath.
Rosalind did not know what to do. In the calm of peaceful life such incidents are rare. She did not know whether she might not injure the child by awaking her. But while she waited, anxious and trembling, Nature solved the question for her. The little wavelets lapping the stones came up with a little rush and sparkle in the light an inch or two farther than before, and bathed Amy’s bare feet. The cold touch broke the spell in a moment. The child started and sprang up with a sudden cry. What might have happened to her had she woke to find herself alone on the beach in the moonlight, Rosalind trembled to think. Her cry rang along all the silent shore, a cry of distracted and bewildering terror: “Oh, mamma! mamma! where are you?” then Amy, turning suddenly round, flew, wild with fear, fortunately into her sister’s arms.
“Rosalind! is it Rosalind? And where is mamma? oh, take me to mamma. She said she would be here.” It was all Rosalind could do to subdue and control the child, who nearly suffocated her, clinging to her throat, urging her on: “I want mamma—take me to mamma!” she cried, resisting her sister’s attempts to lead her up the slope towards the house. Rosalind’s strength was not equal to the struggle. After a while her own longing burst forth. “Oh, if I knew where I could find her!” she said, clasping the struggling child in her arms. Amy was subdued by Rosalind’s tears. The little passion wore itself out. She looked round her, shuddering in the whiteness of the moonlight. “Rosalind! are we all dead, like mamma?” Amy said.
The penetrating sound of the child’s cry reached the house and far beyond it, disturbing uneasy sleepers all along the edge of the lake. It reached John Trevanion, who was seated by himself, chewing the cud of fancy, bitter rather than sweet, and believing himself the only person astir in the house. There is something in a child’s cry which touches the hardest heart; and his heart was not hard. It did not occur to him that it could proceed from any of the children of the house, but it was too full of misery and pain to be neglected. He went out, hastily opening the great window, and was, in his terror, almost paralyzed by the sight of the two white figures among the trees, one leaning upon the other. It was only after a momentary hesitation that he hurried towards them, arriving just in time, when Rosalind’s strength was about giving way, and carried Amy into the house. The entire household, disturbed, came from all corners with lights and outcries. But Amy, when she had been warmed and comforted, and laid in Rosalind’s bed, and recovered from her sobbing, had no explanations to give. She had dreamed she was going to mamma, that mamma was waiting for her down on the side of the lake. “Oh, I want mamma, I want mamma!” the child cried, and would not be comforted.
CHAPTER LIII.
Arthur Rivers had come home on the top of the wave of prosperity; his little war was over, and if it were not he who had gained the day, he yet had a large share of its honors. It was he who had made it known to all the eager critics in England, and given them the opportunity to let loose their opinion. He had kept the supply of news piping hot, one supply ready to be served as soon as the other was despatched, to the great satisfaction of the public and of his “proprietors.” His well-known energy, daring, and alertness, the qualities for which he had been sent out, had never been so largely manifested before. He had thrown himself into the brief but hot campaign with the ardor of a soldier. But there was more in it than this. It was with the ardor of a lover that he had labored—a lover with a great deal to make up to bring him to the level of her he loved. And his zeal had been rewarded. He was coming home, to an important post, with an established place and position in the world, leaving his life of adventure and wandering behind him. They had their charms, and in their time he had enjoyed them; but what he wanted now was something that it would be possible to ask Rosalind to share. Had he been the commander, as he had only been the historian of the expedition; had he brought back a baronetcy and a name famous in the annals of the time, his task would have been easier. As it was, his reputation—though to its owner very agreeable—was of a kind which many persons scoff at. The soldiers, for whom he had done more than anybody else could do, recommending them to their country as even their blood and wounds would never have recommended them without his help, did not make any return for his good offices, and held him cheap; but, on the other hand, it had procured him his appointment, and made it possible for him to put his question to Rosalind into a practical shape and repeat it to her uncle. He came home with his mind full of this and of excitement and eagerness. He had no time to lose. He was too old for Rosalind as well as not good enough for her, not rich enough, not great enough. Sir Arthur Rivers, K.C.B., the conquering hero—that would have been the right thing. But since he was not that, the only thing he could do was to make the most of what he was. He could give her a pretty house in London, where she would see the best of company; not the gentle dulness of the country, but all the wits, all that was brilliant in society, and have the cream of those amusements and diversions which make life worth living in town. That is always something to offer, if you have neither palaces nor castles, nor a great name, nor a big fortune. Some women would think it better than all these; and he knew that it would be full of pleasures and pleasantness, not dull—a life of variety and brightness and ease. Was it not very possible that these things would tempt her, as they have tempted women more lofty in position than Rosalind? And he did not think her relations would oppose it if she so chose. His family was very obscure; but that has ceased to be of the importance it once was. He did not believe that John Trevanion would hesitate on account of his family. If only Rosalind should be pleased! It was, perhaps, because he was no longer quite young that he thought of what he had to offer; going over it a thousand times, and wondering if this and that might not have a charm to her as good, perhaps better, than the different things that other people had to offer. He was a man who was supposed to know human nature and to have studied it much, and had he been writing a book he would no doubt have scoffed at the idea of a young girl considering the attractions of different ways of living and comparing what he had to give with what other people possessed. But there was a certain humility in the way in which his mind approached the subject in his own case, not thinking of his own personal merits. He could give her a bright and full and entertaining life. She would never be dull with him. That was better even than rank, he said to himself.