Madam: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

Rivers arrived a few days after the Trevanion party had gone to Bonport. He was profoundly pleased and gratified to find John Trevanion waiting at the station, and to receive his cordial greeting. “My sister will expect to see you very soon,” he said. “They think it is you who are the hero of the war; and, indeed, so you have been, almost as much as Sir Ruby, and with fewer jealousies; and the new post, I hear, is a capital one. I should say you were a lucky fellow, if you had not worked so well for it all.”

“Yes, I hear it is a pleasant post; and to be able to stay at home, and not be sent off to the end of the earth at a moment’s notice—”

“How will you bear it? that is the question,” said John Trevanion. “I should not wonder if in a year you were bored to death.”

Rivers shook his head, with a laugh. “And I hope all are well,” he said; “Mrs. Lennox and Miss Trevanion.”

He did not venture as yet to put the question more plainly.

“We are all well enough,” said John, “though there are always vexations. Oh! nothing of importance, I hope; only some bother about the children and Rosalind. That’s why I removed them; but Rex is coming, and another young fellow, Hamerton—perhaps you recollect him at Clifton. I hope they will cheer us up a little. There is their train coming in. Let us see you soon. Good-night!”

Another young fellow, Hamerton! Then it was not to meet him, Rivers, that Trevanion was waiting. There was no special expectation of him. It was Rex, the schoolboy, and young Hamerton who was to cheer them up—Rex, a sulky young cub, and Hamerton, a thick-headed rustic. John went off quite unconscious of the arrow he had planted in his friend’s heart, and Rivers turned away, with a blank countenance, to his hotel, feeling that he had fallen down—down from the skies into a bottomless abyss. All this while, during so many days of travel, he had been coming towards her; now he seemed to be thrown back from her—back into uncertainty and the unknown. He lingered a little as the train from Paris came in, and heard John Trevanion’s cheerful “Oh, here you are!” and the sound of the other voices. It made his heart burn to think of young Hamerton—the young clodhopper!—going to her presence, while he went gloomily to the hotel. His appearance late for dinner presented a new and welcome enigma to the company who dined at the table d’hôte. Who was he? Some one fresh from India, no doubt, with that bronzed countenance and hair which had no right to be gray. There was something distinguished about his appearance which everybody remarked, and a little flutter of curiosity to know who he was awoke, especially among the English people, who, but that he seemed so entirely alone, would have taken him for Sir Ruby himself. Rivers took a little comfort from the sense of his own importance and of the sensation made by his appearance. But to arrive here with his mind full of Rosalind, and to find himself sitting alone at a foreign table d’hôte, with half the places empty and not a creature he knew, chilled him ridiculously—he who met people he knew in every out-of-the-way corner in the earth. And all the time Hamerton at her side—Hamerton, a young nobody! There was no doubt that it was very hard to bear. As soon as dinner was over he went out to smoke his cigar and go over again, more ruefully than ever, his prospects of success. It was a brilliant moonlight night, the trees in the hotel garden standing, with their shadows at their feet, in a blackness as of midnight, while between, every vacant space was full of the intense white radiance. He wandered out and in among them, gloomily thinking how different the night would have been had he been looking down upon the silver lake by the side of Rosalind. No doubt that was what she was doing. Would there be any recollection of him among her thoughts, or of the question he had asked her in the conservatory at the Elms? Would she think he was coming for his answer, and what in all this long interval had she been making up her mind to reply?

He was so absorbed in these thoughts that he took no note of the few people about. These were very few, for though the night was as warm as it was bright, it was yet late in the season, and the rheumatic people thought there was a chill in the air. By degrees even the few figures that had been visible at first dwindled away, and Rivers at last awoke to the consciousness that there was but one left, a lady in black, very slight, very light of foot, for whose coming he was scarcely ever prepared when she appeared, and who shrank into the shadow as he came up, as if to avoid his eye. Something attracted him in this mysterious figure, he could not tell what, a subtile sense of some link of connection between her and himself; some internal and unspoken suggestion which quickened his eyes and interest, but which was too indefinite to be put into words. Who could she be? Where had he seen her? he asked, catching a very brief, momentary glimpse of her face; but he was a man who knew everybody, and it was little wonder if the names of some of his acquaintances should slip out of his recollection. It afforded him a sort of occupation to watch for her, to calculate when in the round of the garden which she seemed to be making she would come to that bare bit of road, disclosed by the opening in the trees, where the moonlight revealed in a white blaze everything that passed. He was for the moment absorbed in this pursuit—for it was in reality a pursuit, a sort of hunt through his own mind for some thread of association connected with a wandering figure like this—when some one else, a new-comer, came hastily into the garden, and established himself at a table close by. There was no mistaking this stranger—a robust young Englishman still in his travelling dress, whom Rivers recognized with mingled satisfaction and hostility. He was not then spending the evening with Rosalind, this young fellow who was not worthy to be admitted to her presence. That was a satisfaction in its way. He had been received to dinner because he came with the boy, but that was all. Young Hamerton sat down in the full moonlight where no one could make any mistake about him. He recognized Rivers with a stiff little bow. They said to each other, “It is a beautiful night,” and then relapsed respectively into silence. But in the heat of personal feeling thus suddenly evoked, Rivers forgot the mysterious lady for a moment, and saw her no more. After some time the new-comer said to him, with a sort of reluctant abruptness, “They are rather in trouble over there,” making a gesture with his hand to indicate some locality on the other side of the darkly waving trees.

“In trouble—”

“Oh, not of much importance, perhaps. The children—have all been—upset; I don’t understand it quite. There was something that disturbed them—in the hotel here. Perhaps you know—”