A Rose in June

“Whatever it was, it was very fortunate for me,” said Edward. “As we had met by such a strange chance I took the liberty of seeing her safe to Miss Margetts’ house.”

“You are very good,” said Mrs. Damerel; “I am much obliged to you;” and then the two were silent for a moment, eying each other like wrestlers before they close.

“Mrs. Damerel,” said young Wodehouse, faltering, and brave sailor as he was, feeling more frightened than he could have said, “there is something more which I ought to tell you. Meeting her so suddenly, and remembering how I had been balked in seeing her before I left Dinglefield, I was overcome by my feelings, and ventured to tell Miss Damerel”—

“Mr. Wodehouse, my daughter is engaged to be married!” cried Mrs. Damerel, with sharp and sudden alarm.

“But not altogether—with her own will,” he said.

“You must be mistaken,” said the mother, with a gasp for breath. “Rose is foolish, and changes with every wind that blows. She cannot have intended to leave any such impression on your mind. It is the result, I suppose of some lovers’ quarrel. As this is the case, I need not say that though under any circumstances, I should deeply have felt the honor you do her yet, in the present, the only thing I can do is to say good morning and many thanks. Have you really not seen your mother yet?”

“Not yet. I am going”—

“Oh go, please, go!” said Mrs. Damerel. “It was extremely kind of you to bring the note before going home, but your mother would never forgive me if I detained you; good-by. If you are here for a few days I may hope to see you before you go.”

With these words she accompanied him to the door, smiling cordially as she dismissed him. He could neither protest against the dismissal nor linger in spite of it, to repeat the love-tale which she had stopped on his lips. Her apparent calm had almost deceived him, and but for a little quiver of her shadow upon the wall, a little clasping together of her hands, with Rose’s letter in them, which nothing but the keenest observation could have detected, he could almost have believed in his bewilderment that Rose had been dreaming, and that her mother was quite cognizant of her flight, and knew where she was going and all about it. But, however that might be, he had to go, in a very painful maze of thought, not knowing what to think or to hope about Rose, and having a whimsical certainty of what must be awaiting him at home, had his mother heard, as was most likely, of his arrival, and that he had gone first to the White House. Fortunately for him, Mrs. Wodehouse had not heard it; but she poured into his reluctant ears the whole story of Mr. Incledon and the engagement, and of all the wonders with which he was filling Whitton in preparation for his bride.

“Though I think she treated you very badly, after encouraging you as she did, and leading you on to the very edge of a proposal—yet one can’t but feel that she is a very lucky girl,” said Mrs. Wodehouse. “I hope you will take care not to throw yourself in their way, my dear; though, perhaps, on the whole, it would be best to show that you have got over it entirely and don’t mind who she marries. A little insignificant chit of a girl not worth your notice. There are as good fish in the sea, Edward—or better, for that matter.”

“Perhaps you are right, mother,” he said, glad to escape from the subject; and then he told her the mystery of his sudden promotion, and how he had struggled to get this fortnight’s leave before joining his ship, which was in commission for China. Mrs. Wodehouse fatigued her brain with efforts to discover who it could be who had thus mysteriously befriended her boy; and as this subject drew her mind from the other, Edward was thankful enough to listen to her suggestions of this man who was dead, and that man who was at the end of the world. He had not an idea himself who it could be, and, I think, cherished a furtive hope that it was his good service which had attracted the notice of my lords; for young men are easily subject to this kind of illusion. But his mind, it maybe supposed, was sufficiently disturbed without any question of the kind. He had to reconcile Rose’s evident misery in her flight, with her mother’s calm acceptance of it as a thing she knew of; and to draw a painful balance between Mrs. Damerel’s power to insist and command, and Rose’s power of resistance; finally, he had the despairing consciousness that his leave was only for a fortnight, a period too short for anything to be decided on. No hurried settlement of the extraordinary imbroglio of affairs which he perceived dimly—no license, however special, would make it possible to secure Rose in a fortnight’s time; and he was bound to China for three years! This reflection, you may well suppose, gave the young man enough to think of, and made his first day at home anything but the ecstatic holiday which a first day at home ought to be.

As for Mrs. Damerel, when she went into her own house, after seeing this dangerous intruder to the door, the sense of relief which had been her only conscious feeling up to this moment gave place to the irritation and repressed wrath which, I think, was very natural. She said to herself, bitterly, that as the father had been so the daughter was. They consulted their own happiness, their own feelings, and left her to make everything straight behind them. What did it matter what she felt? What was the good of her but to bear the burden of their self-indulgence?—to make up for the wrongs they did, and conceal the scandal? I am aware that in such a case, as in almost all others, the general sympathy goes with the young; but yet I think poor Mrs. Damerel had much justification for the bitterness in her heart. She wept a few hot tears by herself which nobody even knew of or suspected, and then she returned to the children’s lessons and her daily business, her head swimming a little, and with a weakness born of past agitation, but subdued into a composure not feigned but real. For after all, everything can be remedied except exposure, she thought to herself; and going to Miss Margetts’ showed at least a glimmering of common-sense on the part of the runaway, and saved all public discussion of the “difficulty” between Rose and her mother. Mrs. Damerel was a clergyman’s wife—nay, one might say a clergywoman in her own person, accustomed to all the special decorums and exactitudes which those who take the duties of the caste to heart consider incumbent upon that section of humanity; but she set about inventing a series of fibs on the spot with an ease which I fear long practice and custom had given. How many fibs had she been compelled to tell on her husband’s behalf?—exquisite little romances about his health and his close study, and the mental occupations which kept him from little necessary duties; although she knew perfectly well that his study was mere desultory reading, and his delicate health, self-indulgence. She had shielded him so with that delicate network of falsehood that the rector had gone out of the world with the highest reputation. She had all her life been subject to remark as rather a commonplace wife for such a man, but no one had dreamt of criticising him. Now she had the same thing to begin over again; and she carried her system to such perfection that she began upon her own family, as indeed in her husband’s case she had always done, imbuing the children with a belief in his abstruse studies and sensitive organization, as well as the outer world.

“Rose has gone to pay Miss Margetts a visit,” she said, at the early dinner. “I think a little change will do her good. I shall run up to town in a few days and see after her things.”

“Gone to Miss Margetts’! I wonder why no one ever said so,” cried Agatha, who was always full of curiosity. “What a funny thing, to go off on a visit without even saying a word!”

“It was settled quite suddenly,” said the mother, with perfect composure. “I don’t think she has been looking well for some days; and I always intended to go to town about her things.”

“What a very funny thing,” repeated Agatha, “to go off at five o’clock; never to say a word to any one—not even to take a box with her clothes, only that little black bag. I never heard of anything so funny; and to be so excited about it that she never went to bed.”

“Do not talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Damerel, sharply; “it was not decided till the evening before, after you were all asleep.”

“But, mamma”—

“I think you might take some of this pudding down to poor Mary Simpson,” said Mrs. Damerel, calmly; “she has no appetite, poor girl; and, Agatha, you can call at the postoffice, and ask Mrs. Brown if her niece has got a place yet. I think she might suit me as housemaid, if she has not got a place.”

“Then, thank Heaven,” said Agatha, diverted entirely into a new channel, “we shall get rid of Mary Jane!”

Having thus, as it were, made her experiment upon the subject nearest her heart, Mrs. Damerel had her little romance perfectly ready for Mr. Incledon when he came. “You must not blame me for a little disappointment to-day,” she said, “though indeed I ought to have sent you word had I not been so busy. You must have seen that Rose was not herself yesterday. She has her father’s fine organization, poor child, and all our troubles have told upon her. I have sent her to her old school, to Miss Margetts, whose care I can rely upon, for a little change. It will be handy in many ways, for I must go to town for shopping, and it will be less fatiguing to Rose to meet me there than to go up and down on the same day.”

“Then she was not well yesterday?” said Mr. Incledon, over whose face various changes had passed of disappointment, annoyance, and relief.

“Could you not see that?” said the mother, smiling with gentle reproof. “When did Rose show temper before? She has her faults, but that is not one of them; but she has her father’s fine organization. I don’t hesitate to say now, when it is all over, that poverty brought us many annoyances and some privations, as it does to everybody, I suppose. Rose has borne up bravely, but of course she felt them; and it is a specialty with such highly-strung natures,” said this elaborate deceiver, “that they never break down till the pressure is removed.”

“Ah! I ought to have known it,” said Mr. Incledon; “and, indeed,” he added, after a pause, “what you say is a great relief, for I had begun to fear that so young a creature might have found out that she had been too hasty—that she did not know her own mind.”

“It is not her mind, but her nerves and temperament,” said the mother. “I shall leave her quite quiet for a few days.”

“And must I leave her quiet too?”

“I think so, if you don’t mind. I could not tell you at the time,” said Mrs. Damerel, with absolute truth and candor such as gave the best possible effect when used as accompaniments to the pious fib, “for I knew you would have wished to help us, and I could not have allowed it; but there have been a great many things to put up with. You don’t know what it is to be left to the tender mercies of a maid-of-all-work, and Rose has had to soil her poor little fingers, as I never thought to see a child of mine do; it is no disgrace, especially when it is all over,” she added, with a little laugh.

“Disgrace! it is nothing but honor,” said the lover, with some moisture starting into his eyes. He would have liked to kiss the poor little fingers of which her mother spoke with playful tenderness, and went away comparatively happy, wondering whether there was not something more to do than he had originally thought of by which he could show his pride and delight and loving homage to his Rose.

Poor Mrs. Damerel! I am afraid it was very wicked of her, as a clergywoman who ought to show a good example to the world in general; and she could have whipped Rose all the same for thus leaving her in the lurch; but still it was clever, and a gift which most women have to exercise, more or less.

But oh! the terrors which overwhelmed her soul when, after having dismissed Mr. Incledon, thus wrapped over again in a false security, she bethought herself that Rose had travelled to town in company with young Wodehouse; that they had been shut up for more than an hour together; that he had told his love-tale, and she had confided enough to him to leave him not hopeless, at least. Other things might be made to arrange themselves; but what was to be done with the always rebellious girl when the man she preferred—a young lover, impassioned and urgent—had come into the field?

CHAPTER XVI

When Rose found herself, after so strange and exciting a journey, within the tranquil shades of Miss Margetts’ establishment for young ladies, it would be difficult to tell the strange hush which fell upon her. Almost before the door had closed upon Wodehouse, while still the rumble of the hansom in which he had brought her to her destination, and in which he now drove away, was in her ears, the hush, the chill, the tranquillity had begun to influence her. Miss Margetts, of course, was not up at half-past six on the summer morning, and it was an early housemaid, curious but drowsy, who admitted Rose, and took her, having some suspicion of so unusually early a visitor, with so little luggage, to the bare and forbidding apartment in which Miss Margetts generally received her “parents.” The window looked out upon the little garden in front of the house, and the high wall which inclosed it; and there Rose seated herself to wait, all the energy and passion which had sustained, beginning to fail her, and dreary doubts of what her old school-mistress would say, and how she would receive her, filling her very soul. How strange is the stillness of the morning within such a populated house! nothing stirring but the faint, far-off noises in the kitchen—and she alone, with the big blank walls about her, feeling like a prisoner, as if she had been shut in to undergo some sentence. To be sure, in other circumstances this was just the moment which Rose would have chosen to be alone, and in which the recollection of the scene just ended, the words which she had heard, the looks that had been bent upon her, ought to have been enough to light up the dreariest place, and make her unconscious of external pallor and vacancy. But although the warmest sense of personal happiness which she had ever known in her life had come upon the girl all unawares ere she came here, yet the circumstances were so strange, and the complication of feeling so great, that all the light seemed to die out of the landscape when Edward left her. This very joy which had come to her so unexpectedly gave a different aspect to all the rest of her story. To fly from a marriage which was disagreeable to her, with no warmer wish than that of simply escaping from it, was one thing; but to fly with the aid of a lover, who made the flight an occasion of declaring himself, was another and very different matter. Her heart sank while she thought of the story she had to tell. Should she dare tell Miss Margetts about Edward? About Mr. Incledon it seemed now simple enough.

Miss Margetts was a kind woman, or one of her “young ladies” would not have thought of flying back to her for shelter in trouble; but she was always a little rigid and “particular,” and when she heard Rose’s story (with the careful exclusion of Edward) her mind was very much disturbed. She was sorry for the girl, but felt sure that her mother must be in the right, and trembled a little in the midst of her decorum, to consider what the world would think if she was found to receive girls who set themselves in opposition to their lawful guardians. “Was the gentleman not nice?” she asked, doubtfully; “was he very old? were his morals not what they ought to be? or has he any personal peculiarity which made him unpleasant? Except in the latter case, when indeed one must judge for one’s self, I think you might have put full confidence in your excellent mother’s judgment.”

“Oh, it was not that; he is very good and nice,” said Rose, confused and troubled. “It is not that I object to him; it is because I do not love him. How could I marry him when I don’t care for him? But he is not a man to whom anybody could object.”

“And he is rich, and fond of you, and not too old? I fear—I fear, my dear child, you have been very inconsiderate. You would soon have learned to love so good a man.”

“Oh, Miss Anne,” said Rose (for there were two sisters, and this was the youngest), “don’t say so, please! I never could if I should live a hundred years.”

“You will not live a hundred years; but you might have tried. Girls are pliable; or at least people think so; perhaps my particular position in respect to them makes me less sure of this than most people are. But still, that is the common idea. You would have learned to be fond of him if he were fond of you; unless, indeed”—

“Unless what?” cried Rose, intent upon suggestion of excuse.

“Unless,” said Miss Margetts, solemnly, fixing her with the penetrating glance of an eye accustomed to command—“unless there is another gentleman in the case—unless you have allowed another image to enter your heart?”

Rose was unprepared for such an appeal. She answered it only by a scared look, and hid her face in her hands.

“Perhaps it will be best to have some breakfast,” said Miss Margetts. “You must have been up very early to be here so soon; and I dare say you did not take anything before you started, not even a cup of tea?”

Rose had to avow this lack of common prudence, and try to eat docilely to please her protector; but the attempt was not very successful. A single night’s watching is often enough to upset a youthful frame not accustomed to anything of the kind, and Rose was glad beyond description to be taken to one of the little white-curtained chambers which were so familiar to her, and left there to rest. How inconceivable it was that she should be there again! Her very familiarity with everything made the wonder greater. Had she never left that still, well-ordered place at all? or what strange current had drifted her back again? She lay down on the little white dimity bed, much too deeply affected with her strange position, she thought, to rest; but ere long had fallen fast asleep, poor child, with her hands clasped across her breast, and tears trembling upon her eyelashes. Miss Margetts, being a kind soul, was deeply touched when she looked into the room and found her so, and immediately went back to her private parlor and scored an adjective or two out of the letter she had written—a letter to Rose’s mother, telling how startled she had been to find herself made unawares the confidant of the runaway, and begging Mrs. Damerel to believe that it was no fault of hers, though she assured her in the same breath that every attention should be paid to Rose’s health and comfort. Mrs. Damerel would thus have been very soon relieved from her suspense, even if she had not received the despairing little epistle sent to her by Rose. Of Rose’s note, however, her mother took no immediate notice. She wrote to Miss Margetts, thanking her, and assuring her that she was only too glad to think that her child was in such good hands. But she did not write to Rose. No one wrote to Rose; she was left for three whole days without a word, for even Wodehouse did not venture to send the glowing epistles which he wrote by the score, having an idea that an establishment for young ladies is a kind of Castle Dangerous, in which such letters as his would never be suffered to reach their proper owner, and might prejudice her with her jailers. These dreary days were dreary enough for all of them: for the mother, who was not so perfectly assured of being right in her mode of treatment as to be quite at ease on the subject; for the young lover, burning with impatience, and feeling every day to be a year; and for Rose herself, thus dropped into the stillness away from all that had excited and driven her desperate. To be delivered all at once out of even trouble which is of an exciting and stimulating character, and buried in absolute quiet, is a doubtful advantage in any case, at least to youth. Mr. Incledon bore the interval, not knowing all that was involved in it, with more calm than any of the others. He was quite amenable to Mrs. Damerel’s advice not to disturb the girl with letters. After all, what was a week to a man secure of Rose’s company for the rest of his life? He smiled a little at the refuge which her mother’s care (he thought) had chosen for her—her former school! and wondered how his poor little Rose liked it; but otherwise was perfectly tranquil on the subject. As for poor young Wodehouse, he was to be seen about the railway station, every train that arrived from London, and haunted the precincts of the White House for news, and was as miserable as a young man in love and terrible uncertainty—with only ten days in which to satisfy himself about his future life and happiness—could be. What wild thoughts went through his mind as he answered “yes” and “no” to his mother’s talk, and dutifully took walks with her, and called with her upon her friends, hearing Rose’s approaching marriage everywhere talked of, and the “good luck” of the rector’s family remarked upon! His heart was tormented by all these conversations, yet it was better to hear them, than to be out of the way of hearing altogether. Gretna Green, if Gretna Green should be feasible, was the only way he could think of, to get delivered from this terrible complication; and then it haunted him that Gretna Green had been “done away with,” though he could not quite remember how. Ten days! and then the China seas for three long years; though Rose had not been able to conceal from him that he it was whom she loved, and not Mr. Incledon. Poor fellow! in his despair he thought of deserting, of throwing up his appointment and losing all his chances in life; and all these wild thoughts swayed upwards to a climax in the three days. He determined on the last of these that he would bear it no longer. He put a passionate letter in the post, and resolved to beard Mrs. Damerel in the morning and have it out.

More curious still, and scarcely less bewildering, was the strange trance of suspended existence in which Rose spent these three days. It was but two years since she had left Miss Margetts’, and some of her friends were there still. She was glad to meet them, as much as she could be glad of anything in her preoccupied state, but felt the strangest difference—a difference which she was totally incapable of putting into words—between them and herself. Rose, without knowing it, had made a huge stride in life since she had left their bare school-room. I dare say her education might with much advantage have been carried on a great deal longer than it was, and that her power of thinking might have increased, and her mind been much improved, had she been sent to college afterwards, as boys are, and as some people think girls ought to be; but though she had not been to college, education of a totally different kind had been going on for Rose. She had made a step in life which carried her altogether beyond the placid region in which the other girls lived and worked. She was in the midst of problems which Euclid cannot touch, nor logic solve. She had to exercise choice in a matter concerning other lives as well as her own. She had to decide unaided between a true and a false moral duty, and to make up her mind which was true and which was false. She had to discriminate in what point Inclination ought to be considered a rule of conduct, and in what points it ought to be crushed as mere self-seeking; or whether it should not always be crushed, which was her mother’s code; or if it ought to have supreme weight, which was her father’s practice. This is not the kind of training which youth can get from schools, whether in Miss Margetts’ establishment for young ladies, or even in learned Balliol. Rose, who had been subjected to it, felt, but could not tell why, as if she were years and worlds removed from the school and its duties. She could scarcely help smiling at the elder girls with their “deep” studies and their books, which were far more advanced intellectually than Rose. Oh, how easy the hardest grammar was, the difficulties of Goethe, or of Dante (or even of Thucydides or Perseus, but these she did not know), in comparison with this difficulty which tore her asunder! Even the moral and religious truths in which she had been trained from her cradle scarcely helped her. The question was one to be decided for herself and by herself, and by her for her alone.