ROSE WOUNDED
The light of morning was yet cold along the passages of the house when
Polly Wheedle, hurrying to her young mistress, met her loosely dressed
and with a troubled face.
“What’s the matter, Polly? I was coming to you.”
“O, Miss Rose! and I was coming to you. Miss Bonner’s gone back to her
convulsions again. She’s had them all night. Her hair won’t last till
thirty, if she keeps on giving way to temper, as I tell her: and I know
that from a barber.”
“Tush, you stupid Polly! Does she want to see me?”
“You needn’t suspect that, Miss. But you quiet her best, and I thought
I’d come to you. But, gracious!”
Rose pushed past her without vouchsafing any answer to the look in her
face, and turned off to Juliana’s chamber, where she was neither
welcomed nor repelled. Juliana said she was perfectly well, and that
Polly was foolishly officious: whereupon Rose ordered Polly out of the
room, and said to Juliana, kindly: “You have not slept, dear, and I
have not either. I am so unhappy.”
Whether Rose intended by this communication to make Juliana eagerly
attentive, and to distract her from her own affair, cannot be said, but
something of the effect was produced.
“You care for him, too,” cried Rose, impetuously. “Tell me, Juley: do
you think him capable of any base action? Do you think he would do what
any gentleman would be ashamed to own? Tell me.”
Juliana looked at Rose intently, but did not reply.
Rose jumped up from the bed. “You hesitate, Juley? What? Could you
think so?”
Young women after a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that
Rose was not steady on the plank she walked, and required support.
“I don’t know,” she said, turning her cheek to her pillow.
“What an answer!” Rose exclaimed. “Have you no opinion? What did you
say yesterday? It’s silent as the grave with me: but if you do care for
him, you must think one thing or the other.”
“I suppose not, then—no,” said Juliana.
Repeating the languid words bitterly, Rose continued:
“What is it to love without having faith in him you love? You make my
mind easier.”
Juliana caught the implied taunt, and said, fretfully:
“I’m ill. You’re so passionate. You don’t tell me what it is. How can I
answer you?”
“Never mind,” said Rose, moving to the door, wondering why she had
spoken at all: but when Juliana sprang forward, and caught her by the
dress to stop her, and with a most unwonted outburst of affection,
begged of her to tell her all, the wound in Rose’s breast began to
bleed, and she was glad to speak.
“Juley, do you—can you believe that he wrote that letter which poor
Ferdinand was—accused of writing?”
Juliana appeared to muse, and then responded: “Why should he do such a
thing?”
“O my goodness, what a girl!” Rose interjected.
“Well, then, to please you, Rose, of course I think he is too
honourable.”
“You do think so, Juley? But if he himself confessed it—what then? You
would not believe him, would you?”
“Oh, then I can’t say. Why should he condemn himself?”
“But you would know—you would know that he was a man to suffer death
rather than be guilty of the smallest baseness. His birth—what is
that!” Rose filliped her fingers: “But his acts—what he is himself you
would be sure of, would you not? Dear Juley! Oh, for heaven’s sake,
speak out plainly to me.”
A wily look had crept over Juliana’s features.
“Certainly,” she said, in a tone that belied it, and drawing Rose to
her bosom, the groan she heard there was passing sweet to her.
“He has confessed it to Mama,” sobbed Rose. “Why did he not come to me
first? He has confessed it—the abominable thing has come out of his own
mouth. He went to her last night...”
Juliana patted her shoulders regularly as they heaved. When words were
intelligible between them, Juliana said:
“At least, dear, you must admit that he has redeemed it.”
“Redeemed it? Could he do less?” Rose dried her eyes vehemently, as if
the tears shamed her. “A man who could have let another suffer for his
crime—I could never have lifted my head again. I think I would have cut
off this hand that plighted itself to him! As it is, I hardly dare look
at myself. But you don’t think it, dear? You know it to be false!
false! false!”
“Why should Mr. Harrington confess it?” said Juliana.
“Oh, don’t speak his name!” cried Rose.
Her cousin smiled. “So many strange things happen,” she said, and
sighed.
“Don’t sigh: I shall think you believe it!” cried Rose. An appearance
of constrained repose was assumed. Rose glanced up, studied for an
instant, and breathlessly uttered: “You do, you do believe it, Juley?”
For answer, Juliana hugged her with much warmth, and recommenced the
patting.
“I dare say it’s a mistake,” she remarked. “He may have been jealous of
Ferdinand. You know I have not seen the letter. I have only heard of
it. In love, they say, you ought to excuse... And the want of religious
education! His sister...”
Rose interrupted her with a sharp shudder. Might it not be possible
that one who had the same blood as the Countess would stoop to a
momentary vileness.
How changed was Rose from the haughty damsel of yesterday!
“Do you think my lover could tell a lie?” “He—would not love me long if
_I_ did!”
These phrases arose and rang in Juliana’s ears while she pursued the
task of comforting the broken spirit that now lay prone on the bed, and
now impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment
Juliana’s name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her
faith in Evan: one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She
moaned in a terror of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself
why she needed support. And indeed she was too young for much clear
self-questioning, and her blood was flowing too quickly for her brain
to perceive more than one thing at a time.
“Does your mother believe it?” said Juliana, evading a direct assault.
“Mama? She never doubts what you speak,” answered Rose, disconsolately.
“She does?”
“Yes.”
Whereat Juliana looked most grave, and Rose felt that it was hard to
breathe.
She had grown very cold and calm, and Juliana had to be expansive
unprovoked.
“Believe nothing, dear, till you hear it from his own lips. If he can
look in your face and say that he did it... well, then! But of course
he cannot. It must be some wonderful piece of generosity to his rival.”
“So I thought, Juley! so I thought,” cried Rose, at the new light, and
Juliana smiled contemptuously, and the light flickered and died, and
all was darker than before in the bosom of Rose. She had borne so much
that this new drop was poison.
“Of course it must be that, if it is anything,” Juliana pursued. “You
were made to be happy, Rose. And consider, if it is true, people of
very low birth, till they have lived long with other people, and if
they have no religion, are so very likely to do things. You do not
judge them as you do real gentlemen, and one must not be too harsh—I
only wish to prepare you for the worst.”
A dim form of that very idea had passed through Rose, giving her small
comfort.
“Let him tell you with his own lips that what he has told your mother
is true, and then, and not till then, believe him,” Juliana concluded,
and they kissed kindly, and separated. Rose had suddenly lost her firm
step, but no sooner was Juliana alone than she left the bed, and
addressed her visage to the glass with brightening eyes, as one who saw
the glimmer of young hope therein.
“She love him! Not if he told me so ten thousand times would I believe
it! and before he has said a syllable she doubts him. Asking me in that
frantic way! as if I couldn’t see that she wanted me to help her to her
faith in him, as she calls it. Not name his name? Mr. Harrington! I may
call him Evan: some day!”
Half-uttered, half-mused, the unconscious exclamations issued from her,
and for many a weary day since she had dreamed of love, and studied
that which is said to attract the creature, she had not been so
glowingly elated or looked so much farther in the glass than its pale
reflection.