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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Set against the backdrop of 19th-century British society, Mrs. Oliphant's "Madam" presents a nuanced exploration of gender roles and the complexities of female agency. Through the lens of its protagonist, the narrative intricately unravels the tensions between societal expectations and personal aspirations, all penned in Oliphant's distinctive style that masterfully combines realism with subtle psychological insight. The novel is imbued with a reflective quality, often drawing on the intricate dynamics of familial relationships and social norms, making it a poignant commentary on the lives of women during its time. Mrs. Oliphant, a prolific Victorian author, is renowned for her deep engagement with societal issues, often drawing from her own experiences as a woman writer navigating a male-dominated literary world. Born in 1828, her personal struggles and keen awareness of the predicaments faced by women in society provided her with abundant material that influenced her writing. Oliphant's literary career, spanning several genres, always foregrounded the complexities of human relationships, making her a critical voice of her era. "Madam" is a compelling read for anyone interested in the interplay of gender and society, rich with Oliphant's insightful commentary and character-driven storytelling. This work resonates not only with those exploring feminist literature but also with readers looking to understand the societal constraints that have shaped women's lives historically. It is a significant addition to the understanding of both feminist literary traditions and 19th-century social dynamics. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Madam
Table of Contents
Introduction
A commanding woman’s presence unsettles a close‑knit community, testing the fragile boundary between social power and private truth. Madam by Mrs. Oliphant (Margaret Oliphant) considers how influence operates in everyday life, tracing the subtle pressures that draw individuals into patterns of duty, defiance, and compromise. Without relying on spectacle, it reveals the weight of reputation and the quiet turbulence hidden beneath outward propriety. The novel’s drama grows from ordinary encounters turned consequential, inviting readers to watch how a single figure concentrates hopes, fears, and judgments. In this way, it offers a study of authority that is as intimate as it is incisive.
Written and published in the late nineteenth century, during the high Victorian era, Madam belongs to the tradition of the social and domestic novel, with a pronounced interest in moral psychology. Its setting is a provincial milieu where households, streets, and meeting rooms form a dense network of observation and report. The world it depicts is one in which status is felt everywhere and seldom named directly. Within this environment, ritual and routine become as charged as open confrontation. The book’s historical context matters: it reflects the period’s fascination with character, conscience, and community, while remaining accessible to modern readers.
At its core, the story revolves around the figure recognized as “Madam,” whose position and demeanor shape the lives around her. The narrative observes how her choices and silences ripple outward—through families, friendships, and alliances—stirring curiosity and unease as much as admiration. Rather than relying on overt mystery, the book draws interest from social pressure, the play of appearances, and the interpretive habits of onlookers. Readers enter a world where a gesture, a visit, or a withheld word can redirect a future. This is an experience of quiet suspense: a steady accumulation of meaning that gathers force in ordinary rooms.
Mrs. Oliphant’s voice is judicious and observant, balancing sympathy with a clear‑eyed sense of limitation and consequence. The narration moves with measured pace, attentive to small turns of thought and the ways people speak past one another. Dialogue carries social nuance; interior reflection reveals motive without reducing anyone to a single trait. The mood is restrained yet charged, its tensions arising from choices made under the gaze of others. Readers encounter a style that is lucid but not blunt, ironic but never cruel, committed to showing how character is formed—slowly, partially, and often under pressures that no one fully controls.
Themes of authority, reputation, and responsibility anchor the book. It examines how communities confer legitimacy, how whispers become verdicts, and how power can be exercised through kindness as effectively as command. The novel attends to the vulnerabilities that accompany status—especially for women whose roles are circumscribed by expectation—and to the ethics of influence in households and public rooms alike. It also interrogates the divide between private conviction and public display, asking what is owed to truth when truth has social costs. In exploring these questions, it offers a nuanced portrait of moral choice complicated by affection, ambition, dependence, and fear.
Madam matters now because it shows a society negotiating identity under constant observation, a condition that resonates in an age of pervasive scrutiny. Readers will recognize the dynamics of image management, the power of narrative to fix a reputation, and the difficulty of defending complexity in environments that reward certainty. The book encourages patience with ambiguity and attention to the consequences of judgment—how communities are made or unmade by the stories they tell about their members. In its calm, probing way, it invites reflection on leadership, care, and the responsibilities that accompany influence, whether wielded openly or through subtler means.
For readers of Victorian fiction and anyone interested in the interplay of character and society, Madam offers a refined, absorbing study of power at close quarters. It rewards careful reading with a cumulative sense of inevitability built from minor decisions, habitual words, and unguarded moments. The experience is not sensational but quietly gripping, shaped by a narrator who trusts observation over ornament. As an example of Mrs. Oliphant’s skill in social portraiture and moral inquiry, it shows why her work endures: it treats ordinary life as consequential, granting full humanity to motives that are mixed, choices that are fraught, and outcomes that feel both surprising and earned.
Synopsis
The story opens with the quiet reawakening of an old country house, long shuttered and surrounded by talk of a past disgrace. A young heir comes to take possession, accompanied by his sister and an older kinswoman who serves as their guide and guardian in matters of habit and propriety. The estate’s history presses in at once: portraits line the walls, rooms are closed by custom, and servants repeat cautious phrases about the former mistress known simply as "Madam." The newcomers mean to modernize the household and restore good order, yet they sense at once that authority here belongs to more than the living.
Everyday arrangements occupy the first weeks—inventorying the rooms, interviewing dependents, and receiving polite visits from neighboring families. The social courtesy conceals curiosity. Everyone wants to see whether the young people will acknowledge the house’s most persistent rumor: that Madam, a beautiful and commanding figure from an earlier generation, still, in some fashion, holds her place. Small signs trouble the routine—doors found open, a faint perfume in unused corridors, and servants who hesitate before certain thresholds. The heir dismisses these hints, intent on practical improvements, while his sister, moved by the house’s atmosphere, wonders what claim the past may still assert.
Local voices furnish the first outline of Madam’s story. She was the foreign-born wife of a former master, and her arrival had once disturbed the settled order of the estate. Something divided her from the family—a dispute of rights, or a domestic wrong never publicly named. Whether she fled or was forced to depart remains unclear; the version depends on the teller. The clergyman insists on charity; the lawyer insists on documents; old retainers recall a presence that commanded obedience. Each fragment adds to an impression of unresolved authority, as if Madam’s tenure had never been formally concluded and the house awaited her verdict.
Domestic life resumes in earnest. There are dinners and daylight tours, with the new mistress-in-prospect arranging flowers and seating plans, reassuring anxious allies that youth and good sense will prevail. During one such occasion a veiled portrait is uncovered, revealing a face that unsettles the room by its mixture of brilliance and reserve. Comparisons are whispered between the painted gaze and the living household. A few trivial accidents—the mislaid key, the locked cabinet that opens unasked—pass without remark in public, but take on weight in private thought. The boundary between caution and superstition narrows, and silence becomes a mode of courtesy.
Documents come to light as inventories progress: letters, memoranda, and old accounts that sketch a more complicated Madam than gossip allows. She appears alternately wronged and imperious, generous and exacting, eager to protect a right she believed hers and unwilling to submit to forms that denied it. The heir reads with a mind for property; his sister reads with a mind for character; their guardian weighs both. The question shifts from whether Madam returns to what, precisely, she claims. Is it possession of the house, protection of a name, or acknowledgment of a truth withheld? The household’s sympathies begin to diverge.
Pressure from outside intensifies the strain within. A neighbor with interests in the estate’s boundaries advances subtle claims, and social rivalry hardens into legal precaution. Invitations culminate in a large evening, staged to exhibit steadiness under observation. In the midst of this carefully managed display arrives a person whose manner suggests intimate knowledge of the earlier scandal. Conversation falters; the portrait seems to look on with private comprehension. Hints become declarations, though still veiled in courtesy. The young master resolves to meet suggestion with fact, while his sister, sensing a more personal reckoning, watches for the moment when the house will speak for itself.
The turning point comes in a night of quiet movement, when the ordinary rhythm of the household is interrupted by sounds that seem to summon and restrain at once. Doors open along a familiar corridor; a light appears where none was set; someone is drawn toward a room that custom had closed. Voices, low and urgent, urge patience and obedience to the living order; memory urges a different allegiance. Servants cross themselves, the guardian recalls her duty, and the young master, still doubtful, is compelled to stand between wish and will. The past makes a claim that cannot be postponed, and the house demands an answer.
With daylight comes explanation, not as a single revelation but as a sequence of clarifying acts. Records are examined; a private account is offered; and parties with competing rights discover how much depends on formal recognition as well as feeling. The household must choose between preserving appearances and admitting facts long resisted. The young heir learns that authority is not merely inherited but exercised with restraint; his sister sees that compassion must be joined to prudence to have effect. The community, briefly divided, awaits a settlement that will stabilize both property and reputation, while leaving intact the dignity of those once silenced.
The conclusion restores order without erasing ambiguity. The house resumes its daily course, and the legend of Madam remains, altered by understanding rather than banished by denial. The younger generation accepts responsibility with clearer sight, mindful that authority, to endure, must acknowledge truth. Neighbors adjust their talk to the new equilibrium, and the old servants keep a watch that is no longer fearful. The narrative’s message lies in the persistence of the past within domestic life, the moral weight of names and homes, and the quiet power by which remembered claims shape present duty, even when the final word is politely withheld.
Historical Context
Madam unfolds in late Victorian Britain, a world of provincial towns, adjoining country houses, and an expanding middle class whose respectability is policed by kin, church, and neighbors. The social geography is intimate: drawing rooms, parish halls, and business offices form the stage where reputations are made and unmade. Time markers are the era’s routines—gaslit streets, letter posts and newspapers, and rail connections that permit swift visits yet preserve local insularity. The domestic household, with its layered hierarchy of family and servants, is the central institution. Within this setting, custom, inheritance, and religious observance bind individuals to communal expectations while modern pressures—money, mobility, and new ideas—quietly unsettle them.
Industrialization and urbanization transformed Britain between 1830 and 1890, reshaping provincial life that Madam mirrors in its anxious attention to status and income. By 1880 the United Kingdom possessed over 18,000 miles of railway track, linking county towns to commercial centers and enabling the rhythms of visits, schooling, and business that underpin the plot’s social movement. Cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Manchester more than doubled their populations between mid-century and 1891, producing nearby commuter belts of villas and terraces. The novel’s careful mapping of households and visits reflects this networked world: characters’ mobility, news circulation, and the ever-present possibility of reputational spread are products of the railways, the press, and intensified urban proximity.
Religious life, especially the authority of parish institutions, frames the moral climate. In Scotland the Disruption of 1843 saw 474 ministers led by Thomas Chalmers leave the Established Church to form the Free Church of Scotland, reshaping civic influence, patterns of charity, and middle-class identity. Across Britain, Dissenting and Anglican/Presbyterian rivalries organized social circles and disciplined behavior through kirk sessions, vestries, and voluntary societies. Madam’s portrayal of communal judgment, clerical counsel, and the surveillance of female conduct resonates with these structures: religious elders and pious matrons exercise informal jurisdiction, and domestic crises are read as matters of conscience as much as of law, echoing the period’s fusion of moral and social governance.
Debates over women’s legal and economic agency decisively marked the 1870s–1880s. In England and Wales the Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882) progressively enabled wives to own earnings and property. Crucially for Scottish-inflected settings, the Married Women’s Property (Scotland) Act 1881 abolished the husband’s jus mariti and right of administration, allowing married women to hold separate estate, contract, sue, and be sued from 1882. Guardianship and inheritance norms, however, still privileged male control and family councils. Madam’s focus on a household ruled by a formidable female presence, and on negotiations over dowries, settlements, or succession, reflects this legal transition: authority is visible in the home yet hedged by statutes, trustees, and kin alliances.
Financial shocks unsettled respectable families and inform the novel’s background anxiety about prudence, trust, and ruin. The City of Glasgow Bank collapse (October 1878) epitomized the danger of unlimited liability: over 1,200 shareholders faced assessments that destroyed fortunes; directors were prosecuted in 1879. Earlier, the Companies Acts (1855–56) introduced limited liability, but many provincial banks and ventures still entangled private wealth with institutional risk. Across Britain, middle-class depositors became wary of speculative credit, a caution rippling through trade and domestic economies. Madam’s attention to careful bookkeeping, to marriages as financial consolidations, and to the stigma of failure mirrors this climate, in which a single misjudgment—or a relative’s concealed debt—could reorder status and constrain women’s choices.
Domestic service and regulated charity structured everyday hierarchies. The 1871 census recorded over one million domestic servants in Britain, the largest female occupation; in Scottish and northern English towns, housemaids, cooks, and nurses sustained the genteel household. The Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845 and England’s 1834 Poor Law shaped parochial relief, while the Charity Organisation Society (founded 1869, London) promoted "scientific" philanthropy and moral scrutiny of recipients. Madam’s meticulously stratified home—employer at the apex, confidante-housekeeper below, and a staff attentive to propriety—reflects these arrangements. Acts of benevolence carry social meanings: visiting the sick, managing dependents, and dispensing aid become instruments of authority, reinforcing the matron’s public standing and the neighborhood’s unwritten code.
Victorian fascination with the unseen provided a language for conscience and memory that Oliphant often employs. Modern spiritualism rose after the Fox sisters (Hydesville, 1848) and famous mediums like D. D. Home (active 1850s–1860s). The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 by Henry Sidgwick, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Edmund Gurney to test apparitions, telepathy, and haunted houses. Oliphant, a Blackwood’s Magazine stalwart, published influential supernatural tales such as A Beleaguered City (1879) and The Open Door (1882). When Madam invokes haunting presences or moral visitations, it participates in a contemporary effort to reconcile science, religion, and experience: the “ghost” can be read as social memory enforcing duty, as much as an otherworldly sign.
As a social critique, the book exposes the costs of respectability: the community’s power to shame, the narrow scripts available to women, and the fusion of property with affection in domestic negotiations. It interrogates how legal reforms that nominally grant female agency are blunted by trustees, kin compacts, and reputation. Clerical and philanthropic oversight appear double-edged—upholding care, yet intensifying surveillance and conformity. By dramatizing financial precarity and household government, Madam questions the justice of systems that prize lineage and prudence over vulnerability and desire. Its provincial world becomes a political stage on which gendered dependency, class defensiveness, and moral absolutism are tested, revealing the frictions of a society on the cusp of modernity.
Madam
CHAPTER I.
A large drawing-room in a country-house, in the perfect warmth, stillness, and good order of after-dinner, awaiting the ladies coming in; the fire perfection, reflecting itself in all the polished brass and steel and tiles of the fireplace; the atmosphere just touched with the scent of the flowers on the tables; the piano open, with candles lit upon it; some pretty work laid out upon a stand near the fire, books on another, ready for use, velvet curtains drawn. The whole softly, fully lighted, a place full of every gentle luxury and comfort in perfection—the scene prepared, waiting only the actors in it.
It is curious to look into a centre of life like this, all ready for the human affairs about to be transacted there. Tragedy or comedy, who can tell which? the clash of human wills[6], the encounter of hearts, or perhaps only that serene blending of kindred tastes and inclinations which makes domestic happiness. Who was coming in? A fair mother, with a flock of girls fairer still, a beautiful wife adding the last grace to the beautiful place? some fortunate man’s crown of well-being and happiness, the nucleus of other happy homes to come?
A pause: the fire only crackling now and then, a little burst of flame puffing forth, the clock on the mantelpiece chiming softly. Then there entered alone a young lady about eighteen, in the simple white dinner dress of a home party; a tall, slight girl, with smooth brown hair, and eyes for the moment enlarged with anxiety and troubled meaning. She came in not as the daughter of the house in ordinary circumstances comes in, to take her pleasant place, and begin her evening occupation, whatever it may be. Her step was almost stealthy, like that of a pioneer, investigating anxiously if all was safe in a place full of danger. Her eyes, with the lids curved over them in an anxiety almost despairing, seemed to plunge into and search through and through the absolute tranquillity of this peaceful place. Then she said in a half-whisper, the intense tone of which was equal to a cry, “Mother!” Nothing stirred: the place was so warm, so perfect, so happy; while this one human creature stood on the threshold gazing—as if it had been a desert full of nothing but trouble and terror. She stood thus only for a moment, and then disappeared. It was a painful intrusion, suggestive of everything that was most alien to the sentiment of the place: when she withdrew it fell again into that soft beaming of warmth and brightness waiting for the warmer interest to come.
The doorway in which she had stood for that momentary inspection, which was deep in a solid wall, with two doors, in case any breath of cold should enter, opened into a hall, very lofty and fine, a sort of centre to the quiet house. Here the light was dimmer, the place being deserted, though it had an air of habitation, and the fire still smouldered in the huge chimney, round which chairs were standing. Sounds of voices muffled by closed doors and curtains came from the farther side where the dining-room was. The young lady shrank from this as if her noiseless motion could have been heard over the sounds of the male voices there. She hurried along to the other end of the hall, which lay in darkness with a glimmer of pale sky showing between the pillars from without. The outer doors were not yet shut. The inner glass door showed this paleness of night, with branches of trees tossing against a gray heaven full of flying clouds—the strangest weird contrast to all the warmth and luxury within. The girl shivered as she came in sight of that dreary outer world. This was the opening of the park in front of the house, a width of empty space, and beyond it the commotion of the wind, the stormy show of the coursing clouds. She went close to the door and gazed out, pressing her forehead against the glass, and searching the darkness, as she had done the light, with anxious eyes. She stood so for about five minutes, and then she breathed an impatient sigh. “What is the good?” she said to herself, half aloud.
Here something stirred near her which made her start, at first with an eager movement of hope. Then a low voice said—“No good at all, Miss Rosalind. Why should you mix yourself up with what’s no concern of yours?”
Rosalind had started violently when she recognized the voice, but subdued herself while the other spoke. She answered, with quiet self-restraint: “Is it you, Russell? What are you doing here? You will make it impossible for me to do anything for you if you forget your own place!”
“I am doing what my betters are doing, Miss Rosalind—looking out for Madam, just as you are.”
“How dare you say such things! I—am looking out to see what sort of night it is. It is very stormy. Go away at once. You have no right to be here!”
“I’ve been here longer than most folks—longer than them that has the best opinion of themselves; longer than—”
“Me perhaps,” said Rosalind. “Yes, I know—you came before I was born; but you know what folly this is. Mamma,” the girl said, with a certain tremor and hesitation, “will be very angry if she finds you here.”
“I wish, Miss Rosalind, you’d have a little more respect for yourself. It goes against me to hear you say mamma. And your own dear mamma, that should have been lady of everything—”
“Russell, I wish you would not be such a fool! My poor little mother that died when I was born. And you to keep up a grudge like this for so many years!”
“And will, whatever you may say,” cried the woman, under her breath; “and will, till I die, or till one of us—”
“Go up-stairs,” said Rosalind, peremptorily, “at once! What have you to do here? I don’t think you are safe in the house. If I had the power I should send you away.”
“Miss Rosalind, you are as cruel as— You have no heart. Me, that nursed you, and watched over you—”
“It is too terrible a price to pay,” cried the girl, stamping her foot on the floor. “Go! I will not have you here. If mamma finds you when she comes down-stairs—”
The woman laughed. “She will ask what you are doing here, Miss Rosalind. It will not be only me she’ll fly out upon. What are you doing here? Who’s outside that interests you so? It interests us both, that’s the truth; only I am the one that knows the best.”
Rosalind’s white figure flew across the faint light. She grasped the shoulder of the dark shadow, almost invisible in the gloom. “Go!” she cried in her ear, pushing Russell before her; the onslaught was so sudden and vehement that the woman yielded and disappeared reluctantly, gliding away by one of the passages that led to the other part of the house. The girl stood panting and excited in the brief sudden fury of her passion, a miserable sense of failing faith and inability to explain to herself the circumstances in which she was, heightening the fervor of her indignation. Were Russell’s suspicions true? Had she been in the right all along? Those who take persistently the worst view of human nature are, alas! so often in the right. And what is there more terrible than the passion of defence and apology for one whom the heart begins to doubt? The girl was young, and in her rage and pain could scarcely keep herself from those vehement tears which are the primitive attribute of passion. How calm she could have been had she been quite, quite sure![1q] How she had laughed at Russell’s prejudices in the old days when all was well. She had even excused Russell, feeling that after all it was pretty of her nurse to return continually to the image of her first mistress—Rosalind’s own mother—and that in the uneducated mind the prepossession against a stepmother, the wrath with which the woman saw her own nursling supplanted, had a sort of feudal flavor which was rather agreeable than otherwise.
Rosalind had pardoned Russell as Mrs. Trevanion herself had pardoned her. So long as all was well: so long as there was nothing mysterious, nothing that baffled the spectator in the object of Russell’s animadversions. But now something had fallen into life which changed it altogether. To defend those we love from undeserved accusations is so easy. And in books and plays, and every other exhibition of human nature in fiction, the accused always possesses the full confidence of those who love him. In ordinary cases they will not even hear any explanation of equivocal circumstances—they know that guilt is impossible: it is only those who do not know him who can believe anything so monstrous. Alas! this is not so in common life—the most loving and believing cannot always have that sublime faith. Sometimes doubt and fear gnaw the very souls of those who are the champions, the advocates, the warmest partisans of the accused. This terrible canker had got into Rosalind’s being. She loved her stepmother with enthusiasm. She was ready to die in her defence. She would not listen to the terrible murmur in her own heart; but yet it was there. And as she stood and gazed out upon the park, upon the wild bit of stormy sky, with the black tree-tops waving wildly against it, she was miserable, as miserable as a heart of eighteen ever was. Where had Madam gone, hurrying from the dinner-table where she had smiled and talked and given no sign of trouble? She was not in her room, nor in the nursery[3], nor anywhere that Rosalind could think of. It was in reality a confession of despair, a sort of giving up of the cause altogether, when the girl came to spy out into the wintry world outside and look for the fugitive there.
Rosalind had resisted the impulse to do so for many an evening. She had paused by stealth in the dark window above in the corridor, and blushed for herself and fled from that spy’s place. But by force of trouble and doubt and anguish her scruples had been overcome, and now she had accepted for herself this position of spy. If her fears had been verified, and she had seen her mother cross that vacant space and steal into the house, what the better would she have been? But there is in suspicion a wild curiosity, an eagerness for certainty, which grows like a fever. She had come to feel that she must know—whatever happened she must be satisfied—come what would, that would be better than the gnawing of this suspense. And she had another object too. Her father was an invalid, exacting and fretful. If his wife was not ready at his call whenever he wanted her, his displeasure was unbounded; and of late it had happened many times that his wife had not been at his call. The scenes that had followed, the reproaches, the insults even, to which the woman whom she called mother had been subjected, had made Rosalind’s heart sick. If she could but see her, hasten her return, venture to call her, to bid her come quick, quick! it would be something. The girl was not philosopher enough to say to herself that Madam would not come a moment the sooner for being thus watched for. It takes a great deal of philosophy to convince an anxious woman of this in any circumstances, and Rosalind was in the pangs of a first trouble, the earliest anguish she had ever known. After she had driven Russell away, she stood with her face pressed against the glass and all her senses gone into her eyes and ears. She heard, she thought, the twitter of the twigs in the wind, the sharp sound now and then of one which broke and fell, which was like a footstep on the path; besides the louder sweep of the tree-tops in the wind, and on the other hand the muffled and faint sound of life from the dining-room, every variation in which kept her in alarm.
But it was in vain she gazed; nothing crossed the park except the sweep of the clouds driven along the sky; nothing sounded in the air except the wind, the trees, and sometimes the opening of a distant door or clap of a gate; until the dining-room became more audible, a sound of chairs pushed back and voices rising, warning the watcher. She flew like an arrow through the hall, and burst into the still sanctuary of domestic warmth and tranquillity as if she had been a hunted creature escaping from a fatal pursuit with her enemies at her heels. Her hands were like ice, her slight figure shivering with cold, yet her heart beating so that she could scarcely draw her breath. All this must disappear before the gentlemen came in. It was Rosalind’s first experience in that strange art which comes naturally to a woman, of obliterating herself and her own sensations; but how was she to still her pulse, to restore her color, to bring warmth to her chilled heart? She felt sure that her misery, her anguish of suspense, her appalling doubts and terrors, must be written in her face; but it was not so. The emergency brought back a rush of the warm blood tingling to her fingers’ ends. Oh never, never, through her, must the mother she loved be betrayed! That brave impulse brought color to her cheek and strength to her heart. She made one or two of those minute changes in the room which a woman always finds occasion for, drawing the card-table into a position more exactly like that which her father approved, giving an easier angle to his chair, with a touch moving that of Madam into position as if it had been risen from that moment. Then Rosalind took up the delicate work that lay on the table, and when the gentlemen entered was seated on a low seat within the circle of the shaded lamp, warm in the glow of the genial fireside, her pretty head bent a little over her pretty industry, her hands busy. She who had been the image of anxiety and unrest a moment before was now the culminating-point of all the soft domestic tranquillity, luxury, boundless content and peace, of which this silent room was the home. She looked up with a smile to greet them as they came in. The brave girl had recovered her sweet looks, her color, and air of youthful composure and self-possession, by sheer force of will, and strain of the crisis in which she stood to maintain the honor of the family at every hazard. She had been able to do that, but she could not yet for the moment trust herself to speak.
CHAPTER II.
The gentlemen who came into the drawing-room at Highcourt were four in number: the master of the house, his brother, the doctor, and a young man fresh from the university, who was a visitor. Mr. Trevanion was an invalid; he had been a tall man, of what is called aristocratic appearance[4]; a man with fine, clearly cut features, holding his head high, with an air “as if all the world belonged to him.” These fine features were contracted by an expression of fastidious discontent and dissatisfaction, which is not unusually associated with such universal proprietorship, and illness had taken the flesh from his bones, and drawn the ivory skin tightly over the high nose and tall, narrow forehead. His lips were thin and querulous, his shoulders stooping, his person as thin and angular as human form could be. When he had warmed his ghostly hands at the fire, and seated himself in his accustomed chair, he cast a look round him as if seeking some subject of complaint. His eyes were blue, very cold, deficient in color, and looked out from amid the puckers of his eyelids with the most unquestionable meaning. They seemed to demand something to object to, and this want is one which is always supplied. The search was but momentary, so that he scarcely seemed to have entered the room before he asked, “Where is your mother?” in a high-pitched, querulous voice.
Mr. John Trevanion had followed his brother to the fire, and stood now with his back to the blaze looking at Rosalind. His name was not in reality John, but something much more ornamental and refined; but society had availed itself of its well-known propensity in a more judicious manner than usual, and rechristened him with the short and manly monosyllable which suited his character. He was a man who had been a great deal about the world, and had discovered of how little importance was a Trevanion of Highcourt, and yet how it simplified life to possess a well-known name. One of these discoveries without the other is not improving to the character, but taken together the result is mellowing and happy. He was very tolerant, very considerate, a man who judged no one, yet formed very shrewd opinions of his own, upon which he was apt to act, even while putting forth every excuse and acknowledging every extenuating circumstance. He looked at Rosalind with a certain veiled anxiety in his eyes, attending her answer with solicitude; but to all appearance he was only spreading himself out as an Englishman loves to do before the clear glowing fire. Dr. Beaton had gone as far away as possible from that brilliant centre. He was stout, and disapproved, he said, “on principle,” of the habit of gathering round the fireside. “Let the room be properly warmed,” he was in the habit of saying, “but don’t let us bask in the heat like the dogues,” for the doctor was Scotch, and betrayed now and then in a pronunciation, and always in accent, his northern origin. He had seated himself on the other side of the card-table, ready for the invariable game. Young Roland Hamerton, the Christchurch man, immediately gravitated towards Rosalind, who, to tell the truth, could not have given less attention to him had he been one of the above-mentioned “dogues.”
“Where is your mother?” Mr. Trevanion said, looking round for matter of offence.
“Oh!” said Rosalind, with a quick drawing of her breath; “mamma has gone for a moment to the nursery—I suppose.” She drew breath again before the last two words, thus separating them from what had gone before—a little artifice which Uncle John perceived, but no one else.
“Now this is a strange thing,” said Mr. Trevanion, “that in my own house, and in my failing state of health, I cannot secure my own wife’s attention at the one moment in the day when she is indispensable to me. The nursery! What is there to do in the nursery? Is not Russell there? If the woman is not fit to be trusted, let her be discharged at once and some one else got.”
“Oh! it is not that there is any doubt about Russell, papa, only one likes to see for one’s self.”
“Then why can’t she send you to see for yourself. This is treatment I am not accustomed to. Oh, what do I say? Not accustomed to it! Of course I am accustomed to be neglected by everybody. A brat of a child that never ailed anything in its life is to be watched over, while I, a dying man, must take my chance. I have put up with it for years, always hoping that at last— But the worm will turn, you know; the most patient will break down. If I am to wait night after night for the one amusement, the one little pleasure, such as it is— Night after night! I appeal to you, doctor, whether Mrs. Trevanion has been ready once in the last fortnight. The only thing that I ask of her—the sole paltry little complaisance—”
He spoke very quickly, allowing no possibility of interruption, till his voice, if we may use such a word, overran itself and died away for want of breath.
“My dear sir,” said the doctor, taking up the cards, “we are just enough for our rubber; and, as I have often remarked, though I bow to the superiority of the ladies in most things, whist, in my opinion, is altogether a masculine game. Will you cut for the deal?”
But by this time Mr. Trevanion had recovered his breath. “It is what I will not put up with,” he said; “everybody in this house relies upon my good-nature. I am always the souffre-douleur[2]. When a man is too easy he is taken advantage of on all hands. Where is your mother? Oh, I mean your stepmother, Rosalind; her blood is not in your veins, thank Heaven! You are a good child; I have no reason to find fault with you. Where is she? The nursery? I don’t believe anything about the nursery. She is with some of her low friends[5]; yes, she has low friends. Hold your tongue, John; am I or am I not the person that knows best about my own wife? Where is your mistress? Where is Madam? Don’t stand there looking like a stuck pig, but speak!”
This was addressed to an unlucky footman who had come in prowling on one of the anonymous errands of domestic service—to see if the fire wanted looking to—if there were any coffee-cups unremoved—perhaps on a mission of curiosity, too. Mr. Trevanion was the terror of the house. The man turned pale and lost his self-command. “I—I don’t know, sir. I—I think, sir, as Madam—I—I’ll send Mr. Dorrington, sir,” the unfortunate said.
John Trevanion gave his niece an imperative look, saying low, “Go and tell her.” Rosalind rose trembling and put down her work. The footman had fled, and young Hamerton, hurrying to open the door to her (which was never shut) got in her way and brought upon himself a glance of wrath which made him tremble. He retreated with a chill running through him, wondering if the Trevanion temper was in her too, while the master of the house resumed. However well understood such explosions of family disturbance may be, they are always embarrassing and uncomfortable to visitors, and young Hamerton was not used to them and did not know what to make of himself. He withdrew to the darker end of the room, where it opened into a very dimly lighted conservatory, while the doctor shuffled the cards, letting them drop audibly through his fingers, and now and then attempting to divert the flood of rising rage by a remark. “Bless me,” he said, “I wish I had been dealing in earnest; what a bonnie thing for a trump card!” and, “A little farther from the fire, Mr. Trevanion, you are getting overheated; come, sir, the young fellow will take a hand to begin with, and after the first round another player can cut in.” These running interruptions, however, were of little service; Mr. Trevanion’s admirable good-nature which was always imposed upon; his long-suffering which everybody knew; the advantage the household took of him; the special sins of his wife for whom he had done everything—“Everything!” he cried; “I took her without a penny or a friend, and this is how she repays me”—afforded endless scope. It was nothing to him in his passion that he disclosed what had been the secrets of his life; and, indeed, by this time, after the perpetual self-revelation of these fits of passion there were few secrets left to keep. His ivory countenance reddened, his thin hands gesticulated, he leaned forward in his chair, drawing up the sharp angles of his knees, as he harangued about himself and his virtues and wrongs. His brother stood and listened, gazing blankly before him as if he heard nothing. The doctor sat behind, dropping the cards from one hand to another with a little rustling sound, and interposing little sentences of soothing and gentle remonstrance, while the young man, ashamed to be thus forced into the confidence of the family, edged step by step farther away into the conservatory till he got to the end, where was nothing but a transparent wall of glass between him and the agitations of the stormy night.
Rosalind stole out into the hall with a beating heart. Her father’s sharp voice still echoed in her ears, and she had an angry and ashamed consciousness that the footman who had hurried from the room before her, and perhaps other servants, excited by the crisis, were watching her and commenting upon the indecision with which she stood, not knowing what to do. “Go and tell her.” How easy it was to say so! Oh, if she but knew where to go, how to find her, how to save her not only from domestic strife but from the gnawing worm of suspicion and doubt which Rosalind felt in her own heart! What was she to do? Should she go up-stairs again and look through all the rooms, though she knew it would be in vain? To disarm her father’s rage, to smooth over this moment of misery and put things back on their old footing, the girl would have done anything; but as the moments passed she became more and more aware that this was not nearly all that was wanted, that even she herself, loving Mrs. Trevanion with all her heart, required more. Her judgment cried out for more. She wanted explanation; a reason for these strange disappearances. Why should she choose that time of all others when her absence must be so much remarked; and where, oh, where did she go? Rosalind stood with a sort of stupefied sense of incapacity in the hall. She would not go back. She could not pretend to make a search which she knew to be useless. She could not rush to the door again and watch there, with the risk of being followed and found at that post, and thus betray her suspicion that her mother was out of the house. She went and stood by one of the pillars and leaned against it, clasping her hands upon her heart and trying to calm herself and to find some expedient. Could she say that little Jack was ill, that something had happened? in the confusion of her mind she almost lost the boundary between falsehood and truth; but then the doctor would be sent to see what was the matter, and everything would be worse instead of better. She stood thus against the pillar and did not move, trying to think, in a whirl of painful imaginations and self-questionings, feeling every moment an hour. Oh, if she could but take it upon herself, and bear the weight, whatever it might be; but she was helpless and could do nothing save wait there, hidden, trembling, full of misery, till something should happen to set her free.
Young Hamerton in the conservatory naturally had none of these fears. He thought that old Trevanion was (as indeed everybody knew) an old tyrant, a selfish, ill-tempered egoist, caring for nothing but his own indulgences. How he did treat that poor woman, to be sure! a woman far too good for him whether it was true or not that he had married her without a penny. He remembered vaguely that he had never heard who Madam Trevanion[1] was before her marriage. But what of that? He knew what she was: a woman still full of grace and charm, though she was no longer in her first youth. And what a life that old curmudgeon, that selfish old skeleton, with all his fantastical complaints, led her! When a young man has the sort of chivalrous admiration for an elder woman which Roland Hamerton felt for the mistress of this house, he becomes sharp to see the curious subjection, the cruelty of circumstances, the domestic oppressions which encircle so many. And Madam Trevanion was more badly off, more deeply tried, than any other woman, far or near. She was full of spirit and intelligence, and interest in the higher matters of life; yet she was bound to this fretful master, who would not let her out of his sight, who cared for nothing better than a society newspaper, and who demanded absolute devotion, and the submission of all his wife’s wishes and faculties to his. Poor lady! no wonder if she were glad to escape now and then for a moment, to get out of hearing of his sharp voice, which went through your ears like a skewer.
While these thoughts went through young Hamerton’s mind he had gradually made his way through the conservatory, in which there was but one dim lamp burning, to the farther part, which projected out some way with a rounded end into the lawn which immediately surrounded the house. He was much startled, as he looked cautiously forth, without being aware that he was looking, to see something moving, like a repetition of the waving branches and clouds above close to him upon the edge of a path which led through the park. At first it was but movement and no more, indistinguishable among the shadows. But he was excited by what he had been hearing, and his attention was aroused. After a time he could make out two figures more or less distinct, a man he thought and a woman, but both so dark that it was only when by moments they appeared out of the tree-shadows, with which they were confused, against the lighter color of the gravel that he could make them out. They parted while he looked on; the man disappeared among the trees; the other, he could see her against the faint lightness of the distance, stood looking after the retreating figure; and then turned and came towards the house. Young Hamerton’s heart leaped up in his breast. What did it mean? Did he recognize the pose of the figure, the carriage of the head, the fine movement, so dignified yet so free? He seized hold on himself, so to speak, and put a violent stop to his own thoughts. She! madness! as soon would he suppose that the queen could do wrong. It must be her maid, perhaps some woman who had got the trick of her walk and air through constant association: but she—
Just then, while Hamerton retired somewhat sick at heart, and seated himself near the door of the conservatory to recover, cursing as he did so the sharp, scolding tones of Mr. Trevanion going on with his grievances, Rosalind, standing against the pillar, was startled by something like a step or faint stir outside, and then the sound, which would have been inaudible to faculties less keen and highly strung, of the handle of the glass door. It was turned almost noiselessly and some one came in. Some one. Whom? With a shiver which convulsed her, Rosalind watched: this dark figure might be any one—her mother’s maid, perhaps, even Russell, gone out to pry and spy as was her way. Rosalind had to clutch the pillar fast as she watched from behind while the new-comer took a shawl from her head, and, sighing, arranged with her hands her head-dress and hair. Whatever had happened to her she was not happy. She sighed as she set in order the lace upon her head. Alas! the sight of that lace was enough, the dim light was enough: no one else in the house moved like that. It was the mother, the wife, the mistress of Highcourt, Madam Trevanion, whom all the country looked up to for miles and miles around. Rosalind could not speak. She detached her arms from the pillar and followed like a white ghost as her stepmother moved towards the drawing-room. In the night and dark, in the stormy wind amid all those black trees, where had she been?
CHAPTER III.
“I married her without a penny,” Mr. Trevanion was saying. “I was a fool for my pains. If you think you will purchase attention and submission in that way you are making a confounded mistake. Set a beggar on horseback, that’s how it ends. A duke’s daughter couldn’t stand more by her own way; no, nor look more like a lady,” he added with a sort of pride in his property; “that must be allowed her. I married her without a penny; and this is how she serves me. If she had brought a duchy in her apron, or the best blood in England, like Rosalind’s mother, my first poor wife, whom I regret every day of my life— O-h-h!—so you have condescended, Madam, to come at last.”
She was a tall woman, with a figure full of dignity and grace. If it was true that nobody knew who she was, it was at least true also, as even her husband allowed, that she might have been a princess so far as her bearing and manners went. She was dressed in soft black satin which did not rustle or assert itself, but hung in long sweeping folds, here and there broken in outline by feathery touches of lace. Her dark hair was still perfect in color and texture. Indeed, she was still under forty, and the prime of her beauty scarcely impaired. There was a little fitful color on her cheek, though she was usually pale, and her eyes had a kind of feverish, suspicious brightness like sentinels on the watch for danger signals. Yet she came in without hurry, with a smile from one to another of the group of gentlemen, none of whom showed, whatever they may have felt, any emotion. John Trevanion, still blank and quiet against the firelight; the doctor, though he lifted his eyes momentarily, still dropping through his hands, back and forwards, the sliding, smooth surfaces of the cards. From the dimness in the background Hamerton’s young face shone out with a sort of Medusa look of horror and pain, but he was so far out of the group that he attracted no notice. Mrs. Trevanion made no immediate reply to her husband. She advanced into the room, Rosalind following her like a shadow. “I am sorry,” she said calmly, “to be late: have you not begun your rubber? I knew there were enough without me.”
“There’s never enough without you,” her husband answered roughly; “you know that as well as I do. If there were twice enough, what has that to do with it? You know my play, which is just the one thing you do know. If a man can’t have his wife to make up his game, what is the use of a wife at all? And this is not the first time, Madam; by Jove, not the first time by a dozen. Can’t you take another time for your nap, or your nursery, or whatever it is? I don’t believe a word of the nursery. It is something you don’t choose to have known, it is some of your low—”
“Rosalind, your father has no footstool,” said Mrs. Trevanion. She maintained her calm unmoved. “There are some fresh cards, doctor, in the little cabinet.”
“And how the devil,” cried the invalid, in his sharp tones, “can I have my footstool, or clean cards, or anything I want when you are away—systematically away? I believe you do it on purpose to set up a right—to put me out in every way, that goes without saying, that everybody knows, is the object of your life.”
Still she did not utter a word of apology, but stooped and found the footstool, which she placed at her husband’s feet. “This is the one that suits you best,” she said. “Come, John, if I am the culprit, let us lose no more time.”
Mr. Trevanion kicked the footstool away. “D’ye think I am going to be smoothed down so easily?” he cried. “Oh, yes, as soon as Madam pleases, that is the time for everything. I shall not play. You can amuse yourselves if you please, gentlemen, at Mrs. Trevanion’s leisure, when she can find time to pay a little attention to her guests. Give me those newspapers, Rosalind. Oh, play, play! by all means play! don’t let me interrupt your amusement. A little more neglect, what does that matter? I hope I am used to— Heaven above! they are not cut up. What is that rascal Dorrington about? What is the use of a pack of idle servants? never looked after as they ought to be; encouraged, indeed, to neglect and ill-use the master that feeds them. What can you expect? With a mistress who is shut up half her time, or out of the way or—What’s that? what’s that?”
It was a singular thing enough, and this sudden exclamation called all eyes to it. Mrs. Trevanion, who had risen when her husband kicked his footstool in her face, and, turning round, had taken a few steps across the room, stopped with a slight start, which perhaps betrayed some alarm in her, and looked back. The train of her dress was sweeping over the hearthrug, and there in the full light, twisted into her lace, and clinging to her dress, was a long, straggling, thorny branch, all wet with the damp of night. Involuntarily they were all gazing— John Trevanion looking down gravely at this strange piece of evidence which was close to his feet; the doctor, with the cards in his hand, half risen from his seat stooping across the table to see; while Rosalind, throwing herself down, had already begun to detach it with hands that trembled.
“Oh, mamma!” cried the girl, with a laugh which sounded wild, “how careless, how horrid of Jane! Here is a thorn that caught in your dress the last time you wore it; and she has folded it up in your train, and never noticed. Papa is right, the servants are—”
“Hold your tongue, Rose,” said Mr. Trevanion, with an angry chuckle of satisfaction; “let alone! So, Madam, this is why we have to wait for everything; this is why the place is left to itself; and I—I—the master and owner, neglected. Good heavens above! while the lady of the house wanders in the woods in a November night. With whom, Madam? With whom?” he raised himself like a skeleton, his fiery eyes blazing out of their sockets. “With whom, I ask you? Here, gentlemen, you are witnesses; this is more serious than I thought. I knew my wishes were disregarded, that my convenience was set at naught, that the very comforts that are essential to my life were neglected, but I did not think I was betrayed. With whom, Madam? Answer! I demand his name.”
“Reginald,” said John Trevanion, “for God’s sake don’t let us have another scene. You may think what you please, but we know all that is nonsense. Neglected! Why she makes herself your slave. If the other is as true as that! Doctor, can’t you put a stop to it? He’ll kill himself—and her.”
“Her! oh, she’s strong enough,” cried the invalid. “I have had my suspicions before, but I have never uttered them. Ah, Madam! you thought you were too clever for me. A sick man, unable to stir out of the house, the very person, of course, to be deceived. But the sick man has his defenders. Providence is on his side. You throw dust in the eyes of these men; but I know you; I know what I took you from; I’ve known all along what you were capable of. Who was it? Heaven above! down, down on your knees, and tell me his name.”
Mrs. Trevanion was perfectly calm, too calm, perhaps, for the unconsciousness of innocence; and she was also deadly pale. “So far as the evidence goes,” she said quietly, “I do not deny it. It has not been folded up in my train, my kind Rosalind. I have been out of doors; though the night, as you see, is not tempting; and what then?”
She turned round upon them with a faint smile, and took the branch out of Rosalind’s hand. “You see it is all wet,” she said, “there is no deception in it. I have been out in the park, on the edge of the woods. Look, I did not stop even to change my shoes, they are wet too. And what then?”
“One thing,” cried the doctor, “that you must change them directly, before another word is said. This comes in my department, at least. We don’t want to have you laid up with congestion of the lungs. Miss Rosalind, take your mamma away, and make her, as we say in Scotland, change her feet.”
“Let her go altogether, if she pleases,” said the invalid; “I want to see no more of her. In the park, in the woods—do you hear her, gentlemen? What does a woman want in the woods in a winter night? Let her have congestion of the lungs, it will save disgrace to the family. For, mark my words, I will follow this out. I will trace it to the foundation. Night after night she has done it. Oh, you think I don’t know? She has done it again and again. She has been shameless; she has outraged the very house where— Do you hear, woman? Who is it? My God! a groom, or some low fellow—”
The doctor grasped his arm with a hand that thrilled with indignation as well as professional zeal, while John Trevanion started forward with a sudden flush and menace—
“If you don’t respect your wife, for God’s sake think of the girl—your own child! If it were not for their sakes I should not spend another night under this roof—”
“Spend your night where you please,” said the infuriated husband, struggling against the doctor’s attempt to draw him back into his chair. “If I respect her? No, I don’t respect her. I respect nobody that ill-uses me. Get out of the way, Rosalind! I tell you I’ll turn out that woman. I’ll disgrace her. I’ll show what she’s made of. She’s thrown dust in all your eyes, but never in mine. No, Madam, never in mine; you’ve forgotten, I suppose, what you were when I took you and married you, like a fool—but I’ve never forgotten; and now to break out at your age? Who do you suppose can care for you at your age? It is for what he can get, the villain, that he comes over an old hag like you. Oh, women, women! that’s what women are. Turn out on a winter’s night to philander in the woods with some one, some—”
He stopped, incapable of more, and fell back in his chair, and glared and foamed insults with his bloodless lips which he had not breath to speak.
