Madam: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

He went on Saturday and dined, and as a bitter frost had come on, and all the higher world of the neighborhood was coming on Monday to the pond near the Elms to skate, if the frost held, was invited for that too; and went, and was introduced to a great many people, and made himself quite a reputation before the day was over. There never had been a more successful début in society. And a Times’ Correspondent! Nobody cared who was his father or what his family; he had enough in himself to gain admittance everywhere. And he had a distinguished look, with his gray hair and bright eyes, far more than the ordinary man of his age who is beginning to get rusty, or perhaps bald, which is not becoming. Mr. Rivers’s hair was abundant and full of curl; there was no sign of age in his handsome face and vigorous figure, which made the whiteness of his locks piquant. Indeed, there was no one about, none of the great county gentlemen, who looked so imposing. Rosalind, half afraid of him, half drawn towards him, because, notwithstanding the dreadful disclosure he had made, he had admired and remembered the woman whom she loved, and more than half grateful to him for never having touched on the subject again, was half proud now of the notice he attracted, and because he more or less belonged to her party. She was pleased that he should keep by her side and manifestly devote himself to her. Thus it happened that she ceased to ask herself the question which has been referred to in previous pages, and began to think that the novels were right, after all, and that the commodity in which they dealt so largely did fall to every woman’s lot.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Roland Hamerton was not one of those on whom Mr. Rivers made this favorable impression. He would fain indeed have found something against him, something which would have justified him in stigmatizing as a “cad,” or setting down as full of conceit, the new-comer about whom everybody was infatuated. Roland was not shabby enough to make capital out of the lowliness of Arthur’s connections, though the temptation to do so crossed his mind more than once; but the young man was a gentleman, and could not, even in all the heat of rivalship, make use of such an argument. There was, indeed, nothing to be said against the man whom Roland felt, with a pang, to be so much more interesting than himself; a man who knew when to hold his tongue as well as when to speak; who would never have gone and done so ridiculous a thing as he (Hamerton) had done, trying to convince a girl against her will and to shake her partisan devotion. The young fellow perceived now what a mad idea this had been, but unfortunately it is not till after the event that a simple mind learns such a lesson. Rivers, who was older, had no doubt found it out by experience, or else he had a superior instinct and was a better diplomatist, or perhaps thought less of the consequences involved. It wounded Roland to think of the girl he loved as associated in any way with a woman who was under a stain. He could not bear to think that her robe of whiteness should ever touch the garments of one who was sullied. But afterwards, when he came to think, he saw how foolish he had been. Perhaps Rosalind felt, though she could not allow it, everything he had ventured to suggest; but, naturally, when it was said to her brutally by an outsider, she would flare up. Roland could remember, even in his own limited experience, corresponding instances. He saw the defects of the members of his own family clearly enough, but if any one else ventured to point them out! Yes, yes, he had been a fool, and he had met with the fate he deserved. Rosalind had said conditionally that if it were true she would never speak to him again, but that it was not true. She had thus left for herself a way of escape. He knew very well that it was all truth he had said, but he was glad enough to take advantage of her wilful scepticism when he perceived that it afforded a way of escape from the sentence of excommunication otherwise to be pronounced against him. He stayed away from the Elms for a time, which was also the time of the frost, when there was nothing to be done; but ventured on the third or fourth day to the pond to skate, and was invited by Mrs. Lennox, as was natural, to stay and dine, which he accepted eagerly when he perceived that Rosalind, though cold, was not inexorable. She said very little to him for that evening or many evenings after, but still she did not carry out her threat of never speaking to him again. But when he met the other, as he now did perpetually, it was not in human nature to preserve an unbroken amiability. He let Rivers see by many a silent indication that he hated him, and found him in his way. He became disagreeable, poor boy, by dint of rivalry and the galling sense he had of the advantages possessed by the new-comer. He would go so far as to sneer at travellers’ tales, and hint a doubt that there might be another version of such and such an incident. When he had been guilty of suggestions of this kind he was overpowered with shame. But it is very hard to be generous to a man who has the better of you in every way; who is handsomer, cleverer, even taller; can talk far better, can amuse people whom you only bore; and when you attempt to argue can turn you, alas! inside out with a touch of his finger. The prudent thing for Roland to have done would have been to abstain from any comparison of himself with his accomplished adversary; but he was not wise enough to do this: few, very few, young men are so wise. He was always presenting his injured, offended, clouded face, by the side of the fine features and serene, secure look of the elder man, who was thus able to contemplate him, and, worse, to present him to others, in the aspect of a mad youngster, irritable and unreasoning. Roland was acutely, painfully aware that this was not his character at all, and yet that he had the appearance of it, and that Rosalind no doubt must consider him so. The union of pain, resentment, indignation at the thought of such injustice, with a sense that it scarcely was injustice, and that he was doing everything to justify it, made the poor young fellow as miserable as can be imagined. He did not deserve to be so looked upon, and yet he did deserve it; and Rivers was an intolerable prig and tyrant, using a giant’s strength villainously as a giant, yet in a way which was too cunning to afford any opening for reproach. He could have wept in his sense of the intolerable, and yet he had not a word to say. Was there ever a position more difficult to bear? And poor Roland felt that he had lost ground in every way. Ever since that unlucky interference of his and disclosure of his private information (which he saw now was the silliest thing that could have been done) there was no lingering in the fire-light, no tête-à-tête ever accorded to him. When Mrs. Lennox went to dress for dinner, Rosalind went too. After a while she ceased to show her displeasure, and talked to him as usual when they met in the presence of the family, but he saw her by herself no more. He could not make out indeed whether that fellow was ever admitted to any such privilege, but it certainly was extended to himself no more.

The neighborhood began to take a great interest in the Elms when this rivalship first became apparent, which it need not have done had Hamerton shown any command of himself; for Mr. Rivers was perfectly well-bred, and there is nothing in which distinguished manners show more plainly than in the way by which, in the first stage of a love-making, a man can secure the object of his devotion from all remark. There can be no better test of a high-bred gentleman; and though he was only the son of an humble family with no pretension to be considered county people, he answered admirably to it. Rosalind was herself conscious of the special homage he paid her, but no one else would have been at all the wiser had it not been for the ridiculous jealousy of Roland, who could not contain himself in Rivers’s presence.

The position of Rosalind between these two men was a little different from the ordinary ideal. The right thing to have done in her circumstances would have been, had she “felt a preference,” as it was expressed in the eighteenth century, to have, with all the delicacy and firmness proper to maidenhood, so discouraged and put down the one who was not preferred as to have left him no excuse for persisting in his vain pretensions. If she had no preference she ought to have gently but decidedly made both aware that their homage was vain. As for taking any pleasure in it, if she did not intend in either case to recompense it—that would not be thought of for a moment. But Rosalind, though she had come in contact with so much that was serious in life, and had so many of its gravest duties to perform, was yet so young and so natural as not to be at all superior to the pleasure of being sought. She liked it, though her historian does not know how to make the admission. No doubt, had she been accused of such a sentiment, she would have denied it hotly and even with some indignation, not being at all in the habit of investigating the phenomena of her own mind; but yet she did not in her heart dislike to feel that she was of the first importance to more than one beholder, and that her presence or absence made a difference in the aspect of the world to two men. A sense of being approved, admired, thought much of, is always agreeable. Even when the sentiment does not go the length of love, there is a certain moral support in the consciousness in a girl’s mind that she embodies to some one the best things in humankind. When the highest instincts of love touch the heart it becomes a sort of profanity, indeed, to think of any but the one who has awakened that divine inspiration; but, in the earlier stages, before any sentiment has become definite, or her thoughts begun to contemplate any final decision, there is a secret gratification in the mere consciousness. It may not be an elevated feeling, but it is a true one. She is pleased; there is a certain elation in her veins in spite of herself. Mr. Ruskin says that a good girl should have seven suitors at least, all ready to do impossibilities in her service, among whom she should choose, but not too soon, letting each have a chance. Perhaps in the present state of statistics this is somewhat impracticable, and it may perhaps be doubted whether the adoration of these seven gentlemen would be a very safe moral atmosphere for the young lady. It also goes rather against the other rule which insists on a girl falling in love as well as her lover; that is to say, making her selection by chance, by impulse, and not by proof of the worthiest. But at least it is a high authority in favor of a plurality of suitors, and might be adduced by the offenders in such cases as a proof that their otherwise not quite excusable satisfaction in the devotion of more than one was almost justifiable. The dogma had not been given forth in Rosalind’s day, and she was not aware that she had any excuse at all, but blushed for herself if ever she was momentarily conscious of so improper a sentiment. She blushed, and then she withdrew from the outside world in which these two looked at her with looks so different from those they directed towards any other, and thought of neither of them. On such occasions she would return to her room with a vague cloud of incense breathing about her, a sort of faint atmosphere of flattered and happy sentiment in her mind, or sit down in the firelight in the drawing-room, which Aunt Sophy had left, and think. About whom? Oh, about no one! she would have said—about a pair of beautiful eyes which were like Johnny’s, and which seemed to follow and gaze at her with a rapture of love and devotion still more wonderful to behold. This image was so abstract that it escaped all the drawbacks of fact. There was nothing to detract from it, no test of reality to judge it by. Sometimes she found it impossible not to laugh at Roland; sometimes she disagreed violently with something Mr. Rivers said; but she never quarrelled with the visionary lover, who had appeared out of the unknown merely to make an appeal to her, as it seemed, to frustrate her affections, to bid her wait until he should reveal himself. Would he come again? Should she ever see him again? All this was unreal in the last degree. But so is everything in a young mind at such a moment, when nature plays with the first approaches of fate.

“Mr. Rivers seems to be staying a long time in Clifton,” Mrs. Lennox said one evening, disturbing Rosalind out of these dreams. Roland was in the room, though she could scarcely see him, and Rosalind had been guilty of what she herself felt to be the audacity of thinking of her unknown lover in the very presence of this visible and real one. She had been sitting very quiet, drawing back out of the light, while a gentle hum of talk went on on the other side of the fire. The windows, with the twilight stars looking in, and the bare boughs of the trees waving across, formed the background, and Mrs. Lennox, relieved against one of those windows, was the centre of the warm but uncertainly lighted room. Hamerton sat behind, responding vaguely, and intent upon the shadowed corner in which Rosalind was. “How can he be spared, I wonder, out of his newspaper work!” said the placid voice. “I have always heard it was a dreadful drudgery, and that you had to be up all night, and never got any rest.”

“He is not one of the principal ones, perhaps,” Roland replied.

“Oh, he must be a principal! John would not have brought a man here who is nothing particular to begin with, if he had not been a sort of a personage in his way.”

“Well, then, perhaps he is too much of a principal,” said Hamerton; “perhaps it is only the secondary people that are always on duty; and this, you know, is what they call the silly time of the year.”

“I never knew much about newspaper people,” said Aunt Sophy, in her comfortable voice, something like a cat purring by the warm glow of the fire. “We did not think much of them in my time. Indeed, there are a great many people who are quite important in society nowadays that were never thought of in my time. I never knew how important a newspaper editor was till I read that novel of Mr. Trollope’s—do you remember which one it is, Rosalind?—where there is Tom something or other who is the editor of the Jupiter. That was said to mean the Times. But if Mr. Rivers is so important as that, how does he manage to stay so long at Clifton, where I am sure there is nothing going on?”