ROSALIE
Let us pay a call on Cinderella.
Alas! not a Cinderella with a prince and gorgeous clothing, but one
without a tongue, or rather, tongue-tied.
Rosalie Paleaf, for that was her name, lived alone with an aunt and
uncle. Both her parents were dead. She was pretty, of that fair delicate
type called “picturesque.” Her hair was of a palish yellow tint, glossy,
but straight; her skin was fair and delicate. The eyes were grey, with
dark curling lashes, and delicately marked brows. Her nose turned up
just the least little bit, the most charming upward, delicate little
curve in the wrong direction it would be possible to meet. The corners
of her mouth, however, turned down with the saddest, most wistful droop
imaginable. In fact, there was only one feature in her face that kept it
from becoming most woefully pathetic, and that was the little,
inquisitive, life-enjoying nose. To come back to her eyes for finishing
touches. Their greyness was very pale. The pupils generally were large,
with an equally black rim along the edge of the iris. Inside this rim
the colour gradually paled to the pupil, which gave her eyes a curiously
bright appearance. And then being tongue-tied! She had nothing she could
talk with but her eyes, and so she used them.
Uncle and aunt were very kind to her. Who indeed could help being that?
She was the gentlest, kindest creature, harmless and very helpless, with
the sweetest face, the happiest manner, and sunniest smile upon
occasions.
They were people of moderate circumstances in a very quiet way, and if
Rosalie had not the hardest work of the house to do, it was because her
aunt always insisted on doing it, with the help of an occasional
charwoman. And so, when very young, she learnt to hem, and dust, and do
the toasting. Later she got promoted to wiping tea-things, then dinner
dishes, and ended as a fully-fledged young housekeeper, ready to bake
and cook, darn, and make and mend, to sweep and dust, and do all work
that is useful.
Beyond this her education had not progressed. She could read and write,
’tis certain, but very little more. Accomplishments were beyond the
means of her relations, and had they not been it would never have struck
them a child apparently quite dumb should need such things. So she
stayed at home and was happy, except in the company of strangers, when
her sad defect made itself felt under their pitying glances of surprise,
however well they might try to conceal them.
But a child’s happiness often constitutes a woman’s misery. As the years
passed by Rosalie began to feel her loneliness, her utter incapacity for
the work of the world. She felt also something deeper, stronger, more
unwordable. It was more real than anything else in her life, yet,
because unseen, it was unsympathised with as having no existence. And
so, although her happiness was gradually becoming overshadowed, she
never fully recognised it till one October evening when she had turned
twenty.
To look at Rosalie the spectator would never have taken her for that
age. All her life had been spent in one long silent dream—the privilege
of childhood.
It was the kind of autumn evening made for thought and sadness. The sky
was very clear, with a suspicion of purple in it, and the gold of ages
was in the west. As she stood by her bedroom window looking out at it,
there came that terrible foreboding of sadness and sorrow that seems to
do its best to crush young hearts, though perhaps it only moulds them.
And along with it came a longing for expansion, a weariness of the
endless routine, the companionless silence and that nameless thirst
after something, she knew not what. How could Rosalie, walking in the
mist, having no speech or utterance, explain it even to herself? She
wanted something, the purple of the sky suggested something—suggested,
nothing more. And from that day forward the nameless longing grew,
settling itself within her heart, finding no happier outside quarters. I
do not know that she looked thinner or more frail, her physical strength
was too great for that. No one beyond herself knew of the longing, and
she attributed it all to discontent, and tried to stifle it.
At last one evening she understood. The inordinate longing for speech
rushed over her.
But how to manage it? It is all very well to find out what you want to
do—but how to do it? There was only one way—only one way, at any rate,
that suggested itself to her, and that way was prayer.
Now, her religious education had not been exactly neglected, but Rosalie
was one of those heedless creatures who hear a little and invent a great
deal.
She had been told with great piety by her aunt of the great golden
Serpent, its wonderful power, its relentless cruelty to those who
crossed or vexed it, its generosity to those who did as they were told,
and from those few rudimentary remarks she had built up a little golden
temple of her own, quite an unseen spiritual affair, in which to worship
the Supreme Being of Lucifram. She certainly gave to the gorgeous
Serpent many qualifications she had never been told it possessed, but
what of that? She was but a poor, helpless creature at best. But with a
reverent, far-away love she had always worshipped the Serpent, although
as a sex she had been given to understand he reckoned her somewhat
inferior.
But now, sitting up in bed, there came to her one of those terrible
convictions, never to be misplaced, that are in themselves the sheerest
madness or the sheerest sanity, that she must get her tongue untied. And
the Serpent, being the strongest of all powers on Lucifram, was the
likeliest to do it.
Next afternoon at five o’clock saw Rosalie kneeling in the famous
temple, her head buried in her hands, praying in the silence as only
sincerity and helplessness can pray.
“Oh, Serpent, give me my tongue! Let me talk,” said she, a most natural
request when coming from a woman.
Then she went home quite comforted, as only the simple can be.
“One does not pray for nothing,” she thought “I feel the Serpent heard
me.”
And that night she was so happy, she did not notice her uncle’s troubled
look and silent way. She did not mean to be selfish, she was thinking
purely of her prayer.
Some weeks went by, and every day she walked to the temple and prayed:
“Oh, Serpent, give me my tongue! Let me talk.”
But no answer came to her prayer, and at last she got tired of kneeling
down among the empty pews. The building was so big that she felt quite
far away, so she picked up her courage and went up the big aisle, right
up through the choir stalls to the steps rising towards the altar,
hidden by the curtains. It was legitimate for any woman to go so far.
She was perfectly within her right. So she went up the steps and knelt
down quietly beside the golden railing.
And there she prayed to the unseen Serpent—prayed, and believed it heard
her. Then she went home. How near she had been to that Unseen Power! How
fervently she had prayed! The Serpent always answered prayer, always
looked after the helpless.
On going home her ring at the door was answered by a neighbour with a
white face and swollen eyes.
What was the matter?
An hour ago, soon after she went out, her uncle had been brought home
after a stroke. Since then he had died, just after the arrival of the
doctor.
Rosalie sank back against the lobby wall, her hands by her sides, her
eyes filled with horror.
“Your aunt is upstairs in the back bedroom,” said the neighbour, who had
told the story as quietly as she could, as gently as its tragedy
allowed.
Rosalie pulled herself together and went upstairs, trying the bedroom
door at the back. It opened, and she was thankful. Her aunt sat in a
chair, her head buried in the pillow of the one spare bed. Rosalie went
to her and touched her shoulder. The elder woman moved slowly, and then
sat up, smoothing her grey hair.
“I’ve been here long enough,” she said dully. “I must go and see to
things. Sit here, Rosalie. It isn’t for you to be about.”
Her dull grief repelled all sad advances. From the time that Rosalie
found her lying there cramped against the bed she showed no further
signs of weakness, no further signs of giving in, till the funeral was
over.
Then when the blinds were drawn up once more, and the November light had
flooded the room, she took her foster daughter in her arms and wept as
only a broken-hearted woman growing old can weep.
“We went to school together,” she said at last, twisting her wet soiled
handkerchief around her fingers. After that she scarcely mentioned her
husband again.
But now time showed a great difference in the little household, in
addition to its greatest loss. Money troubles and worry, of late months
thickening ominously, had helped to bring about the sudden end. There
were no more happy meals at tea-time, no bread to toast, nothing but the
barest, rude necessities of life. For they were poor, so poor that they
scarcely knew how to look the future in the face. Both were very
helpless.
The elder woman in a few short months had grown old, shrunken, and thin.
She tried at times to smile bravely, to take interest in life and
neighbours, but life and interest had gone for her in the old playfellow
and life love. And more and more each day since her uncle’s death
Rosalie felt the want of speech. She could give none of that bright
assistance that was needed. No better than a living shadow she was bound
to go about the house. Yet still she went to the temple to pray in
humility and faithfulness.
And then, as the spring came round, she heard vague, disquieting rumours
of the little house being shut up. Her aunt was going to live with a
married brother, whose wife had little in common with her, and she
herself, Rosalie, was to be sent to a Home for the Deaf and Dumb and
Blind, a large charitable institution, greatly enlarged and improved
upon by the munificence of a dead millionaire, one Geoffrey Todbrook by
name. Insufferable thought! To separate her from the only human being
she had learnt to love, shutting them each within a dungeon of
strangers! “O God! O Serpent!” What of the prayer of months, to give one
atom in the multitude the powers of speech? Prayer of presumption! Its
punishment the taking away of everything that makes some lives worth
living, the precious gift of freedom.
And yet Rosalie set her lips hard, there was no drooping, and went once
more, with faith supremely high, but heart all wrong and tortured, to
kneel and pray to God within the temple.