Madam: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Oh, her name would be Trevanion? Is there supposed to be any chance that she would change her name?”

“Why do you ask such a question?”

“I thought, by the way you spoke, as if there might be a doubt.”

“No,” said Roland, after a moment, “I never thought— I don’t think it’s likely. Why should she change her name?”

Everard answered with great softness, “I don’t know anything about it. Something in your tone suggested the idea, but no doubt I am wrong. No, I cannot say, all in a moment, that I am acquainted—” Here his want of experience told like Roland’s. He was very willing, nay anxious, to deceive, but did not know how. He colored, and made a momentary pause. “But I will inquire,” he said, “if it is a thing that the—Trevanions want to find out.”

Roland looked at him with instinctive suspicion, but he did not know what he suspected. He had no desire, however, to put this quest out of his own hands into those of a man who might make capital of it as he himself intended to do. He said hastily, “Oh, I don’t want to put you to trouble. I think I am on the scent. If you hear anything, however, and would come in and see me at the hotel—to-night.”

The other looked at him with something in his face which Roland did not understand. Was it a kind of sardonic smile? Was it offence? He ended by repeating, “I will inquire,” and took off his hat again in that Frenchified way.

And Roland went on, unaided, somewhat discouraged, indeed, with his inquiries. Sometimes he saw in the distance a figure in the crowd which he thought he recognized, and hurried after it, but never with any success. For either it was gone when he reached the spot, or turned out to be one of the ordinary people about; for of course there were many tall ladies wearing black to be seen about the streets of Aix, and most of them English. He trudged about all that day and the next with a heavy heart, his high hopes abandoning him, and the search seeming hopeless. He became aware when night fell that he was not alone in his quest. There drifted past him at intervals, hurried, flushed, and breathless, with her cloak hanging from her shoulders, her bonnet blown back from her head, her eyes always far in front of her, investigating every corner, a woman so instinct with keen suspicion and what looked like a thirst for blood that she attracted the looks even of the careless passers-by, and was followed, till she outstripped him, by more than one languid gendarme. Her purpose was so much more individual than she was that, for a time, in the features of this human sleuth-hound he failed to recognize Russell. But it was Russell, as he soon saw, with a mixture of alarm and horror. It seemed to him that some tragic force of harm was in this woman’s hand, and that while he wandered vaguely round and round discovering nothing, she, grim with hatred and revenge, was on the track.

CHAPTER LIX.

When John Trevanion questioned Everard, as already recorded, the young man, though greatly disconcerted, had made him a very unexpected reply. He had the boldness to say what was so near the truth that there was all the assurance of conviction in his tone; and John, on his side, was confounded. Everard had declared to him that there was a family connection, a relationship, between himself and Mr. Trevanion, though, on being more closely questioned, he declined to explain how it was; that is, he postponed the explanation, saying that he could only make the matter clear by reference to another relation, who could give him the exact information. It was a bold thought, conceived at the moment, and carried through with the daring of desperation. He felt, before it was half said, that John Trevanion was impressed by the reality in his tone, and that if he dared further, and told all his tale, the position of affairs might be changed. But Rosalind’s reply to the sudden declaration which in his boldness he had made, and to his vague, ill-advised promises to reward her if she would listen to him, had driven for some days everything out of his mind; and when he met Roland Hamerton he was but beginning to recall his courage, and to say to himself that there was still something which might be done, and that things were not perhaps so hopeless as they seemed. From that brief interview he went away full of a sudden resolution. If, after all, this card was the one to play, did not he hold it in his hand? If it were by means of the lost mother that Rosalind was to be won, it was by the same means alone that he could prove to John Trevanion, all he had promised to prove, and thus set himself right with Rosalind’s guardian. Thoughts crowded fast upon him as he turned away, instinctively making a round to escape Hamerton’s scrutiny. This led him back at length to the precincts of the hotel, where he plunged among the shrubbery, passing round behind the house, and entered by a small door which was almost hid by a clump of laurels. A short stair led from this to a small, entirely secluded apartment separated from the other part of the hotel. The room which young Everard entered with a sort of authoritative familiarity was well lighted with three large windows opening upon the garden, but seemed to be a sort of receptacle for all the old furniture despised elsewhere. It had but one occupant, who put down the book when Everard came in, and looked up with a faint, inquiring smile. The reader does not need to be told who was the banished woman who sat here, shut out and separated from the external world. She had thought it wise, amid the risks of travel, to call herself by the name he bore, and had been living here, as everywhere, in complete retirement, before the arrival of the Trevanions. The apartment which she occupied was cheap and quiet, one of which recommendations was of weight with her in consequence of Edmund’s expenses; the other for reasons of her own. She had changed greatly in the course of these two years, not only by becoming very thin and worn, but also from a kind of moral exhaustion which had taken the place of that personal power and dignity which were once the prevailing expression of her face. She had borne much in the former part of her life without having the life itself crushed out of her; but her complete transference to a strange world, her absorption in one sole subject of interest which presented nothing noble, nothing elevated, and, finally, the existence of a perpetual petty conflict in which she was always the loser, a struggle to make a small nature into a great one, or, rather, to deal with the small nature as if it were a great one, to attribute to it finer motives than it could even understand, and to appeal with incessant failure to generosities which did not exist—this had taken the strength out of Mrs. Trevanion. Her face had an air of exhausted and hopeless effort. She saw the young man approaching with a smile, which, though faint, was yet one of welcome. To be ready to receive him whenever he should appear, to be always ready and on the watch for any gleam of higher meaning, to be dull to no better impulse, but always waiting for the good—that was the part she had to play. But she was no longer impatient, no longer eager to thrust him into her own world, to convey to him her own thoughts. That she knew was an endeavor without hope. And, as a matter of fact, she had little hope in anything. She had done all that she knew how to do. If anything further were possible she was unaware what it was; and her face, like her heart, was worn out. Yet she looked up with what was not unlike a cheerful expectation. “Well, Edmund?” she said.