A Rose in June
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“If I say you are to marry me, you will do it? You pledge yourself to that? You will marry me if I please?”
“Yes,” said Rose, very pale, looking up at him steadfastly. She neither trembled nor hesitated. She had gone beyond any superficial emotion.
Then he stooped and kissed her with a passion which was rough—almost brutal. Rose’s pale face flushed, and her slight figure wavered like a reed; but she neither shrank nor complained. He had a right to dictate to her—she had put it into his hands. The look of those large, innocent eyes, from which all conflict had departed, which had grown abstract in their wistfulness, holding fast at least by one clear duty, went to his heart. He kept looking at her, but she did not quail. She had no thought but her word, and to do what she had said.
“Rose,” he said, “you are a cheat, like all women. You come to me with this face, and insult me and stab me, and say then you will do what I tell you, and stand there, looking at me with innocent eyes like an angel. How could you find it in your heart—if you have a heart—to tell me all this? How dare you put that dainty little cruel foot of yours upon my neck, and scorn and torture me—how dare you, how dare you!” There came a glimmer into his eyes, as if it might have been some moisture forced up by means beyond his control, and he held her hands with such force that it seemed to Rose he shook her, whether willingly or not. But she did not shrink. She looked up at him, her eyes growing more and more wistful, and though he hurt her, did not complain.
“It was that you might know all the truth,” she said, almost under her breath. “Now you know everything and can judge—and I will do as you say.”
He held her so for a minute longer, which seemed eternity to Rose; then he let her hands drop, and turned away.
“It is not you who are to blame,” he said, “not you, but your mother, who would have sold you. Good God! do all women traffic in their own flesh and blood?”
“Do not say so!” cried Rose, with sudden tears; “you shall not! I will not hear it! She has been wrong; but that was not what she meant.”
Mr. Incledon laughed—his mood seemed to have changed all in a moment. “Come Rose,” he said, “perhaps it is not quite decorous for you, a young lady, to be here alone. Come! I will take you to your mother, and then you shall hear what I have got to say.”
She walked out of the great house by his side as if she were in a dream. What did he mean? The suspense became terrible to her; for she could not guess what he would say. Her poor little feet twisted over each other and she stumbled and staggered with weakness as she went along beside him—stumbled so much that he made her take his arm, and led her carefully along, with now and then a kind but meaningless word. Before they entered the White House, Rose was leaning almost her whole weight upon his supporting arm. The world was swimming and floating around, the trees going in circles, now above, now below her, she thought. She was but half conscious when she went in, stumbling across the threshold, to the little hall, all bright with Mr. Incledon’s flowers. Was she to be his, too, like one of them—a flower to carry about wherever he went, passive and helpless as one of the plants—past resistance, almost past suffering? “I am afraid she is ill; take care of her, Agatha,” said Mr. Incledon to her sister, who came rushing open-mouthed and open-eyed; and, leaving her there, he strode unannounced into the drawing-room to meet the real author of his discomfiture, an antagonist more worthy of his steel and against whom he could use his weapons with less compunction than against the submissive Rose.
Mrs. Damerel had been occupied all the morning with Mr. Nolan, who had obeyed her summons on the first day of Rose’s flight, but whom she had dismissed when she ascertained where her daughter was, assuring him that to do nothing was the best policy, as indeed it had proved to be. The curate had gone home that evening obedient; but moved by the electrical impulse which seemed to have set all minds interested in Rose in motion on that special day, had come back this morning to urge her mother to go to her or to allow him to go to her. Mr. Nolan’s presence had furnished an excuse to Mrs. Damerel for declining to receive poor young Wodehouse, who had asked to see her immediately after breakfast. She was discussing even then with the curate how to get rid of him, what to say to him, and what it was best to do to bring Rose back to her duty. “I can’t see so clear as you that it’s her duty, in all the circumstances,” the curate had said doubtfully. “What have circumstances to do with a matter of right and wrong—of truth and honor?” cried Mrs. Damerel. “She must keep her word.” It was at this precise moment of the conversation that Mr. Incledon appeared; and I suppose she must have seen something in his aspect and the expression of his face that showed some strange event had happened. Mrs. Damerel gave a low cry, and the muscles of Mr. Incledon’s mouth were moved by one of those strange contortions which in such cases are supposed to do duty for a smile. He bowed low, with a mock reverence, to Mr. Nolan, but did not put out his hand.
“I presume,” he said, “that this gentleman is in the secret of my humiliation, as well as the rest of the family, and that I need not hesitate to say what I have to say before him. It is pleasant to think that so large a circle of friends interest themselves in my affairs.”
“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Damerel. “Your humiliation! Have you sustained any humiliation? I do not know what you mean.”
“Oh! I can make it very clear,” he said, with the same smile. “Your daughter has been with me; I have just brought her home.”
“What! Rose?” said Mrs. Damerel, starting to her feet; but he stopped her before she could make a step.
“Do not go,” he said; “It is more important that you should stay here. What have I done to you that you should have thus humbled me to the dust? Did I ask you to sell her to me? Did I want a wife for hire? Should I have authorized any one to persecute an innocent girl, and drive her almost mad for me? Good heavens, for me! Think of it, if you can. Am I the sort of man to be forced on a girl—to be married as a matter of duty? How dared you—how dared any one insult me so!”
Mrs. Damerel, who had risen to her feet, sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. I do not think she had ever once taken into consideration this side of the question.
“Mr. Incledon,” she stammered, “you have been misinformed; you are mistaken. Indeed, indeed, it is; not so.”
“Misinformed!” he cried; “mistaken! I have my information from the very fountain-head—from the poor child who has been all but sacrificed to this supposed commercial transaction between you and me, which I disown altogether for my part. I never made such a bargain, nor thought of it. I never asked to buy your Rose. I might have won her, perhaps,” he added, calming himself with an effort, “if you had let us alone, or I should have discovered at once that it was labor lost. Look here. We have been friends, and I never thought of you till to-day but with respect and kindness. How could you put such an affront on me?”
“Gently, gently,” said Mr. Nolan, growing red; “you go too far, sir. If Mrs. Damerel has done wrong, it was a mistake of the judgment, not of the heart.”
“The heart!” he cried, contemptuously; “how much heart was there in it? On poor Rose’s side, a broken one; on mine, a heart deceived and deluded. Pah! do not speak to me of hearts or mistakes; I am too deeply mortified—too much wronged for that.”
“Mr. Incledon,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising, pale yet self-possessed, “I may have done wrong, as you say; but what I have done, I did for my child’s advantage and for yours. You were told she did not love you, but you persevered; and I believed, and believe still, that when she knew you better—when she was your wife—she would love you. I may have pressed her too far; but it was no more a commercial transaction—no more a sale of my daughter”—she said, with a burning flush coming over her face—“no more than I tell you. You do me as much wrong as you say I have done you—Rose! Rose!”
Rose came in followed by Agatha, with her hat off, which showed more clearly the waste which emotion and fatigue, weary anxiety, waiting, abstinence, and mental suffering had worked upon her face. She had her hands clasped loosely yet firmly, in the attitude which had become habitual to her, and a pale smile like the wannest of winter sunshine on her face. She came up very quietly, and stood between the two like a ghost. Agatha said, who stood trembling behind her.
“Mamma, do not be angry,” she said, softly; “I have told him everything, and I am quite ready to do whatever he decides. In any case, he ought to know everything, for it is he who is most concerned—he and I.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Captain Wodehouse did not get admission to the White House that day until the afternoon. He was not to be discouraged, though the messages he got were of a depressing nature enough. “Mrs. Damerel was engaged, and could not see him; would he come later?” “Mrs. Damerel was still engaged—more engaged than ever.”
And while Mary Jane held the door ajar, Edward heard a voice raised high, with an indignant tone, speaking continuously, which was the voice of Mr. Incledon, though he did not identify it. Later still, Mrs. Damerel was still engaged; but, as he turned despairing from the door, Agatha rushed out, with excited looks, and with a message that if he came back at three o’clock her mother would see him.
“Rose has come home, and oh! there has been such a business!” Agatha whispered into his ear before she rushed back again. She knew a lover, and especially a favored lover, by instinct, as some girls do; but Agatha had the advantage of always knowing her own mind, and never would be the centre of any imbroglio, like the unfortunate Rose.
“Are you going back to the White House again?” said Mrs. Wodehouse. “I wonder how you can be so servile, Edward. I would not go, hat in hand, to any girl, if I were you; and when you know that she is engaged to another man, and he a great deal better off than you are! How can you show so little spirit? There are more Roses in the garden than one, and sweeter Roses, and richer, would be glad to have you. If I had thought you had so little proper pride, I should never have wished you to come here.”
“I don’t think I have any proper pride,” said Edward, trying to make a feeble joke of it; “I have to come home now and then to know what it means.”
“You were not always so poor-spirited,” said his mother; “it is that silly girl who has turned your head. And she is not even there; she has gone up to town to get her trousseau and choose her wedding silks, so they say; and you may be sure, if she is engaged like that, she does not want to be reminded of you.”
“I suppose not,” said Edward, drearily; “but as I promised to go back, I think I must. I ought at least to bid them good-by.”
“Oh! if that is all,” said Mrs. Wodehouse, pacified, “go, my dear; and mind you put the very best face upon it. Don’t look as if it were anything to you; congratulate them, and say you are glad to hear that any one so nice as Mr. Incledon is to be the gentleman. Oh! if I were in your place, I should know what to say! I should give Miss Rose something to remember. I should tell her I hoped she would be happy in her grand house, and was glad to hear that the settlements were everything they ought to be. She would feel that, you may be sure; for a girl that sets up for romance and poetry and all that don’t like to be supposed mercenary. She should not soon forget her parting with me.”
“Do you think I wish to hurt and wound her?” said Edward. “Surely not. If she is happy, I will wish her more happiness. She has never harmed me—no, mother. It cannot do a man any harm, even if it makes him unhappy, to think of a woman as I think of Rose.”
“Oh! you have no spirit,” cried Mrs. Wodehouse; “I don’t know how a son of mine can take it so easily. Rose, indeed! Her very name makes my blood boil!”
But Edward’s blood was very far from boiling as he walked across the Green for the third time that day. The current of life ran cold and low in him. The fiery determination of the morning to “have it out” with Mrs. Damerel, and know his fate and Rose’s fate, had fallen into a despairing resolution at least to see her for the last time, to bid her forget everything that had passed, and try himself to forget. If her fate was sealed, and no longer in her own power to alter, that was all a generous man could do; and he felt sure, from the voices he had heard, and from the air of agitation about the house, and from Agatha’s hasty communication, that this day had been a crisis to more than himself. He met Mr. Incledon as he approached the house. His rival looked at him gravely without a smile, and passed him with an abrupt “good morning.” Mr. Incledon had not the air of a triumphant lover, and there was something of impatience and partial offence in his look as his eyes lingered for a moment upon the young sailor; so it appeared to Edward, though I think it was rather regret, and a certain wistful envy that was in Mr. Incledon’s eyes. This young fellow, not half so clever, or so cultivated, or so important as himself, had won the prize which he had tried for and failed. The baffled man was still disturbed by unusual emotion, but he was not ungenerous in his sentiments; but then the other believed that he himself was the failure, and that Mr. Incledon had succeeded, and interpreted his looks, as we all do, according to the commentary in our own minds. Edward went on more depressed than ever after this meeting. Just outside the White House he encountered Mr. Nolan, going out to walk with the children. “Now that the gale is over, the little boats are going out for a row,” said the curate, looking at him with a smile. It was not like Mr. Nolan’s usual good nature, poor Edward thought. He was ushered in at once to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Damerel sat in a great chair, leaning back, with a look of weakness and exhaustion quite out of keeping with her usual energy. She held out her hand to him without rising. Her eyes were red, as if she had been shedding tears, and there was a flush upon her face. Altogether, her appearance bewildered him; no one in the world had ever seen Mrs. Damerel looking like this before.
“I am afraid you will think me importunate, coming back so often,” he said, “but I felt that I must see you. Not that I come with much hope; but still it is better to know the very worst, if there is no good to hear.”
“It depends on what you think worst or best,” she said. “Mr. Wodehouse, you told me you were promoted—are captain now, and you have a ship?”
“Commander: and alas! under orders for China, with ten days’ more leave,” he said, with a faint smile; “though perhaps, on the whole, that may be best. Mrs. Damerel, may I not ask—for Rose? Pardon me for calling her so—I can’t think of her otherwise. If it is all settled and made up, and my poor chance over, may I not see her, only for a few minutes? If you think what a dismal little story mine has been—sent away without seeing her a year ago, then raised into sudden hope by our chance meeting the other morning, and now, I suppose, sentenced to banishment forever”—
“Stay a little,” she said; “I have had a very exciting day, and I am much worn out. Must you go in ten days?”
“Alas!” said Wodehouse, “and even my poor fortnight got with such difficulty—though perhaps on the whole it is better, Mrs. Damerel.”
“Yes,” she said, “have patience a moment; things have turned out very differently from what I wished. I cannot pretend to be pleased, scarcely resigned to what you have all done between you. You have nothing to offer my daughter, nothing! and she has nothing to contribute on her side. It is all selfish inclination, what you liked, not what was best, that has swayed you. You had not self-denial enough to keep silent; she had not self-denial enough to consider that this is not a thing for a day but for life; and the consequences, I suppose, as usual, will fall upon me. All my life I have had nothing to do but toil to make up for the misfortunes caused by self-indulgence. Others have had their will and pleasure, and I have paid the penalty. I thought for once it might have been different, but I have been mistaken, as you see.”
“You forget that I have no clue to your meaning—that you are speaking riddles,” said Wodehouse, whose depressed heart had begun to rise and flutter and thump against his young breast.
“Ah; that is true,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising with a sigh. “Well, I wash my hands of it; and for the rest you will prefer to hear it from Rose rather than from me.”
He stood in the middle of the room speechless when she closed the door behind her, and heard her soft steps going in regular measure through the still house, as Rose had heard them once. How still it was! the leaves fluttering at the open window, the birds singing, Mrs. Damerel’s footsteps sounding fainter, his heart beating louder. But he had not very long to wait.
Mr. Nolan and the children went out on the river, and rowed up that long, lovely reach past Alfredsbury, skirting the bank, which was pink with branches of the wild rose and sweet with the feathery flowers of the Queen of the Meadows. Dick flattered himself that he pulled an excellent bow, and the curate, who loved the children’s chatter, and themselves, humored the boy to the top of his bent. Agatha steered, and felt it an important duty, and Patty, who had nothing else to do, leaned her weight over the side of the boat, and did her best to capsize it, clutching at the wild roses and the meadow-queen. They shipped their oars and floated down with the stream when they had gone as far as they cared to go, and went up the hill again to the White House in a perfect bower of wild flowers, though the delicate rose blossoms began to droop in the warm grasp of the children before they got home. When they rushed in, flooding the house all through and through with their voices and their joyous breath and their flowers, they found all the rooms empty, the drawing-room silent, in a green repose, and not a creature visible. But while Agatha rushed up-stairs, calling upon her mother and Rose, Mr. Nolan saw a sight from the window which set his mind at rest. Two young figures together, one leaning on the other—two heads bent close, talking too low for any hearing but their own. The curate looked at them with a smile and a sigh. They had attained the height of blessedness. What better could the world give them? and yet the good curate’s sigh was not all for the disappointed, nor his smile for their happiness alone.
The lovers were happy; but there are drawbacks to every mortal felicity. The fact that Edward had but nine days left, and that their fate must after that be left in obscurity, was, as may be supposed, a very serious drawback to their happiness. But their good fortune did not forsake them; or rather, to speak more truly, the disappointed lover did not forsake the girl who had appealed to him, who had mortified and tortured him, and promised with all the unconscious cruelty of candor to marry him if he told her to do so. Mr. Incledon went straight to town from the White House, intent on finishing the work he had begun. He had imposed on Mrs. Damerel as a duty to him, as a recompense for all that he had suffered at her hands, the task of receiving Wodehouse, and sanctioning the love which her daughter had given; and he went up to town to the Admiralty, to his friend whose unfortunate leniency had permitted the young sailor to return home. Mr. Incledon treated the matter lightly, making a joke of it. “I told you he was not to come home, but to be sent off as far as possible,” he said.
“Why, what harm could the poor young fellow do in a fortnight?” said my lord. “I find I knew his father—a fine fellow and a good officer. The son shall be kept in mind, both for his sake and yours.”
“He has done all the harm that was apprehended in his fortnight,” said Mr. Incledon, “and now you must give him an extension of leave—enough to be married in. There’s nothing else for it. You ought to do your best for him, for it is your fault.”
Upon which my lord, who was of a genial nature, laughed and inquired into the story, which Mr. Incledon related to him after a fashion, in a way which, amused him hugely. The consequence was that Commander Wodehouse got his leave extended to three months, and was transferred from the China station to the Mediterranean. Mr. Incledon never told them who was the author of this benefit, though I think they had little difficulty in guessing. He sent Rose a parure of pearls and turquoises, simple enough for her youth and the position she had preferred to his, and sent the diamonds which had been reset for her back to his bankers; and then he went abroad. He did not go back to Whitton, even for necessary arrangements, but sent for all he wanted; and after that morning’s work in the White House, returned to Dinglefield no more for years.
After this there was no possible reason for delay, and Rose was married to her sailor in the parish church by good Mr. Nolan, and instead of any other wedding tour went off to cruise with him in the Mediterranean. She had regained her bloom, and merited her old name again before the day of the simple wedding. Happiness brought back color and fragrance to the Rose in June; but traces of the storm that had almost crushed her never altogether disappeared, from her heart at least, if they did from her face. She cried over Mr. Incledon’s letter the day before she became Edward Wodehouse’s wife. She kissed the turquoises when she fastened them about her pretty neck. Love is the best, no doubt; but it would be hard if to other sentiments, less intense, even a bride might not spare a tear.
As for the mothers on either side, they were both indifferently satisfied. Mrs. Wodehouse would not unbend so much for months after as to say anything but “Good morning” to Mrs. Damerel, who had done her best to make her boy unhappy; and as for the marriage, now that it was accomplished after so much fuss and bother, it was after all nothing of a match for Edward. Mrs. Damerel, on her side, was a great deal too proud to offer any explanations except such as were absolutely necessary to those few influential friends who must be taken into every one’s confidence who desires to keep a place in society. She told those confidants frankly enough that Edward and Rose had met accidentally, and that a youthful love, supposed to be over long ago, had burst forth again so warmly that nothing could be done but to tell Mr. Incledon; and that he had behaved like a hero. The Green for a little while was very angry at Rose; the ladies shook their heads at her, and said how very, very hard it was on poor Mr. Incledon. But Mr. Incledon was gone, and Whitton shut up, while Rose still remained with all the excitement of a pretty wedding in prospect, and “a perfect romance” in the shape of a love-story. Gradually, therefore, the girl was forgiven; the richer neighbors went up to town and bought their presents, the poorer ones looked over their stores to see what they could give, and the girls made pieces of lace for her, and pin-cushions, and antimacassars; and thus her offence was condoned by all the world. Though Mrs. Damerel asked but a few people to the breakfast, the church was crowded to see the wedding, and all the gardens, in the parish cut their best roses for its decoration; for this event occurred in July, the end of the rose season. Dinglefield church overflowed with roses, and the bridesmaids’ dresses were trimmed with them, and every man in the place had some sort of a rosebud in his coat. And thus it was, half smothered in roses, that the young people went away.
Mr. Incledon was not heard of for years after; but quite lately he came back to Whitton married to a beautiful Italian lady, for whose sake it was, originally, as Rumor whispered, that he had remained unmarried so long. This lady had married and forsaken him nearly twenty years before, and had become a widow about the time that he left England. I hope, therefore, that though Rose’s sweet youth and freshness had attracted him to her, and though he had regarded her with deep tenderness, hoping perhaps for a new, subdued, yet happy life through her means, there had been little passion in him to make his wound bitter after the mortification of the moment. The contessa was a woman of his own age, who had been beautiful, and was magnificent, a regal kind of creature, at home amid all the luxuries which his wealth provided, and filling a very different position from anything that could have been attainable by Rose. They dazzle the people on the Green when they are at Whitton, and the contessa is as gracious and more inaccessible than any queen. She smiles at them all benignly, and thinks them an odd sort of gentle savages, talking over their heads in a voice which is louder and rounder than suits with English notions. And it is reported generally that Mr. Incledon and his foreign wife are “not happy.” I cannot say anything about this, one way or another, but I am sure that the happiness he shares with the contessa must be something of a very different character from that which he would have had with Rose; higher, perhaps, as mere love (you all say) is the highest; but different—and in some things, perhaps, scarcely so homely-sweet.