ROSE
Have you seen a young audacious spirit smitten to the earth? It is a
singular study; and, in the case of young women, a trap for
inexperienced men. Rose, who had commanded and managed every one
surrounding her since infancy, how humble had she now become!—how much
more womanly in appearance, and more child-like at heart! She was as
wax in Lady Elburne’s hands. A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley
campaign, made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of
scorpions. The high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the
scorn of any judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her.
Rose, the tameless heroine who had once put her mother’s philosophy in
action, was the easiest filly that turbaned matron ever yet drove into
the straight road of the world. It even surprised Lady Jocelyn to see
how wonderfully she had been broken in by her grandmother. Her ladyship
wrote to Drummond to tell him of it, and Drummond congratulated her,
saying, however: “Changes of this sort don’t come of conviction. Wait
till you see her at home. I think they have been sticking pins into the
sore part.”
Drummond knew Rose well. In reality there was no change in her. She was
only a suppliant to be spared from ridicule: spared from the
application of the scourge she had woven for herself.
And, ah! to one who deigned to think warmly still of such a disgraced
silly creature, with what gratitude she turned! He might well suppose
love alone could pour that profusion of jewels at his feet.
Ferdinand, now Lord Laxley, understood the merits of his finger-nails
better than the nature of young women; but he is not to be blamed for
presuming that Rose had learnt to adore him. Else why did she like his
company so much? He was not mistaken in thinking she looked up to him.
She seemed to beg to be taken into his noble serenity. In truth she
sighed to feel as he did, above everybody!—she that had fallen so low!
Above everybody!—born above them, and therefore superior by grace
divine! To this Rose Jocelyn had come—she envied the mind of Ferdinand.
He, you may be sure, was quite prepared to accept her homage. Rose he
had always known to be just the girl for him; spirited, fresh, and with
fine teeth; and once tied to you safe to be staunch. They walked
together, rode together, danced together. Her soft humility touched him
to eloquence. Say she was a little hypocrite, if you like, when the
blood came to her cheeks under his eyes. Say she was a heartless minx
for allowing it to be bruited that she and Ferdinand were betrothed. I
can but tell you that her blushes were blushes of gratitude to one who
could devote his time to such a disgraced silly creature, and that she,
in her abject state, felt a secret pleasure in the protection
Ferdinand’s name appeared to extend over her, and was hardly willing to
lose it.
So far Lady Elburne’s tact and discipline had been highly successful.
One morning, in May, Ferdinand, strolling with Rose down the garden
made a positive appeal to her common sense and friendly feeling; by
which she understood that he wanted her consent to his marriage with
her.
Rose answered:
“Who would have me?”
Ferdinand spoke pretty well, and ultimately got possession of her hand.
She let him keep it, thinking him noble for forgetting that another had
pressed it before him.
Some minutes later the letters were delivered. One of them contained
Juliana’s dark-winged missive.
“Poor, poor Juley!” said Rose, dropping her head, after reading all
that was on the crumpled leaf with an inflexible face. And then,
talking on, long low sighs lifted her bosom at intervals. She gazed
from time to time with a wistful conciliatory air on Ferdinand. Rushing
to her chamber, the first cry her soul framed was:
“He did not kiss me!”
The young have a superstitious sense of something incontestably true in
the final protestations of the dead. Evan guiltless! she could not
quite take the meaning this revelation involved. That which had been
dead was beginning to move within her; but blindly: and now it stirred
and troubled; now sank. Guiltless all she had thought him! Oh! she knew
she could not have been deceived. But why, why had he hidden his
sacrifice from her?
“It is better for us both, of course,” said Rose, speaking the world’s
wisdom, parrot-like, and bursting into tears the next minute.
Guiltless, and gloriously guiltless! but nothing—nothing to her!
She tried to blame him. It would not do. She tried to think of that
grovelling loathsome position painted to her by Lady Elburne’s graphic
hand. Evan dispersed the gloomy shades like sunshine. Then in a sort of
terror she rejoiced to think she was partially engaged to Ferdinand,
and found herself crying again with exultation, that he had not kissed
her: for a kiss on her mouth was to Rose a pledge and a bond.
The struggle searched her through: bared her weakness, probed her
strength; and she, seeing herself, suffered grievously in her
self-love. Am I such a coward, inconstant, cold? she asked.
Confirmatory answers coming, flung her back under the shield of
Ferdinand if for a moment her soul stood up armed and defiant, it was
Evan’s hand she took.
To whom do I belong? was another terrible question. In her ideas, if
Evan was not chargeable with that baseness which had sundered them he
might claim her yet, if he would. If he did, what then? Must she go to
him?
Impossible: she was in chains. Besides, what a din of laughter there
would be to see her led away by him. Twisting her joined hands: weeping
for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over
Juliana’s legacy to her.
“Why did I doubt him?” she cried, jealous that any soul should have
known and trusted him better. Jealous and I am afraid that the kindling
of that one feature of love relighted the fire of her passion thus
fervidly. To be outstripped in generosity was hateful to her. Rose,
naturally, could not reflect that a young creature like herself,
fighting against the world, as we call it, has all her faculties at the
utmost stretch, and is often betrayed by failing nature when the will
is still valiant.
And here she sat—in chains! “Yes! I am fit only to be the wife of an
idle brainless man, with money and a title,” she said, in extreme
self-contempt. She caught a glimpse of her whole life in the horrid
tomb of his embrace, and questions whether she could yield her hand to
him—whether it was right in the eyes of heaven, rushed impetuously to
console her, and defied anything in the shape of satisfactory
affirmations. Nevertheless, the end of the struggle was, that she felt
that she was bound to Ferdinand.
“But this I will do,” said Rose, standing with heat-bright eyes and
deep-coloured cheeks before the glass. “I will clear his character at
Beckley. I will help him. I will be his friend. I will wipe out the
injustice I did him.” And this bride-elect of a lord absolutely added
that she was unworthy to be the wife of a tailor!
“He! how unequalled he is! There is nothing he fears except shame. Oh!
how sad it will be for him to find no woman in his class to understand
him and be his helpmate!”
Over, this sad subject, of which we must presume her to be accurately
cognizant, Rose brooded heavily. By mid-day she gave her Grandmother
notice that she was going home to Juliana’s funeral.
“Well, Rose, if you think it necessary to join the ceremony,” said Lady
Elburne. “Beckley is bad quarters for you, as you have learnt. There
was never much love between you cousins.”
“No, and I don’t pretend to it,” Rose answered. “I am sorry poor
Juley’s gone.”
“She’s better gone for many reasons—she appears to have been a little
venomous toad,” said Lady Elburne; and Rose, thinking of a snakelike
death-bite working through her blood, rejoined: “Yes, she isn’t to be
pitied: she’s better off than most people.”
So it was arranged that Rose should go. Ferdinand and her aunt, Mrs.
Shorne, accompanied her. Mrs. Shorne gave them their opportunities,
albeit they were all stowed together in a carriage, and Ferdinand
seemed willing to profit by them; but Rose’s hand was dead, and she sat
by her future lord forming the vow on her lips that they should never
be touched by him.
Arrived at Beckley, she, to her great delight, found Caroline there,
waiting for the funeral. In a few minutes she got her alone, and after
kisses, looked penetratingly into her lovely eyes, shook her head, and
said: “Why were you false to me?”
“False?” echoed Caroline.
“You knew him. You knew why he did that. Why did you not save me?”
Caroline fell upon her neck, asking pardon. She spared her the recital
of facts further than the broad avowal. Evan’s present condition she
plainly stated: and Rose, when the bitter pangs had ceased, made oath
to her soul she would rescue him from it.
In addition to the task of clearing Evan’s character, and rescuing him,
Rose now conceived that her engagement to Ferdinand must stand
ice-bound till Evan had given her back her troth. How could she obtain
it from him? How could she take anything from one so noble and so poor!
Happily there was no hurry; though before any bond was ratified, she
decided conscientiously that it must be done.
You see that like a lithe snake she turns on herself, and must be
tracked in and out. Not being a girl to solve the problem with tears,
or outright perfidy, she had to ease her heart to the great shock
little by little—sincere as far as she knew: as far as one who loves
may be. The day of the funeral came and went. The Jocelyns were of
their mother’s opinion: that for many reasons Juliana was better out of
the way. Mrs. Bonner’s bequest had been a severe blow to Sir Franks.
However, all was now well. The estate naturally lapsed to Lady Jocelyn.
No one in the house dreamed of a will, signed with Juliana’s name,
attested, under due legal forms, being in existence. None of the
members of the family imagined that at Beckley Court they were then
residing on somebody else’s ground.
Want of hospitable sentiments was not the cause that led to an
intimation from Sir Franks to his wife, that Mrs. Strike must not be
pressed to remain, and that Rose must not be permitted to have her own
way in this. Knowing very well that Mrs. Shorne spoke through her
husband’s mouth, Lady Jocelyn still acquiesced, and Rose, who had
pressed Caroline publicly to stay, had to be silent when the latter
renewed her faint objections; so Caroline said she would leave on the
morrow morning.
Juliana, with her fretfulness, her hand bounties, her petty egoisms,
and sudden far-leaping generosities, and all the contradictory impulses
of her malady, had now departed utterly. The joys of a landed
proprietor mounted into the head of Sir Franks. He was up early the
next morning, and he and Harry walked over a good bit of the ground
before breakfast. Sir Franks meditated making it entail, and favoured
Harry with a lecture on the duty of his shaping the course of his
conduct at once after the model of the landed gentry generally.
“And you may think yourself lucky to come into that catalogue—the son
of a younger son!” said Sir Franks, tapping Mr. Harry’s shoulder. Harry
also began to enjoy the look and smell of land. At the breakfast,
which, though early, was well attended, Harry spoke of the
adviseability of felling timber here, planting there, and so forth,
after the model his father held up. Sir Franks nodded approval of his
interest in the estate, but reserved his opinion on matters of detail.
“All I beg of you is,” said Lady Jocelyn, “that you won’t let us have
turnips within the circuit of a mile”; which was obligingly promised.
The morning letters were delivered and opened with the customary
calmness.
“Letter from old George,” Harry sings out, and buzzes over a few lines.
“Halloa!—Hum!” He was going to make a communication, but catching sight
of Caroline, tossed the letter over to Ferdinand, who read it and
tossed it back with the comment of a careless face.
“Read it, Rosey?” says Harry, smiling bluntly.
Rather to his surprise, Rose took the letter. Study her eyes if you
wish to gauge the potency of one strong dose of ridicule on an
ingenuous young heart. She read that Mr. George Uplift had met “our
friend Mr. Snip” riding, by moonlight, on the road to Beckley. That
great orbed night of their deep tender love flashed luminously through
her frame, storming at the base epithet by which her lover was
mentioned, flooding grandly over the ignominies cast on him by the
world. She met the world, as it were, in a death-grapple; she matched
the living heroic youth she felt him to be, with that dead wooden image
of him which it thrust before her. Her heart stood up singing like a
craven who sees the tide of victory setting toward him. But this passed
beneath her eyelids. When her eyes were lifted, Ferdinand could have
discovered nothing in them to complain of, had his suspicions been
light to raise: nor could Mrs. Shorne perceive that there was the
opening for a shrewd bodkin-thrust. Rose had got a mask at last: her
colour, voice, expression, were perfectly at command. She knew it to be
a cowardice to wear any mask: but she had been burnt, horribly burnt:
how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation of such a bold
clear-visaged girl. She conquered the sneers of the world in her soul:
but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the scorching it
had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by Evan, she
stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her, among the
skilful torturers of Elburne House.
Sir Franks had risen and walked to the window.
“News?” said Lady Jocelyn, wheeling round in her chair.
The one eyebrow up of the easy-going baronet signified trouble of mind.
He finished his third perusal of a letter that appeared to be written
in a remarkably plain legal hand, and looking as men do when their
intelligences are just equal to the comprehension or expression of an
oath, handed the letter to his wife, and observed that he should be
found in the library. Nevertheless he waited first to mark its effect
on Lady Jocelyn. At one part of the document her forehead wrinkled
slightly.
“Doesn’t sound like a joke!” he said.
She answered:
“No.”
Sir Franks, apparently quite satisfied by her ready response, turned on
his heel and left the room quickly.
An hour afterward it was rumoured and confirmed that Juliana Bonner had
willed all the worldly property she held in her own right, comprising
Beckley Court, to Mr. Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor. An abstract
of the will was forwarded. The lawyer went on to say, that he had
conformed to the desire of the testatrix in communicating the existence
of the aforesaid will six days subsequent to her death, being the day
after her funeral.
There had been railing and jeering at the Countess de Saldar, the
clever outwitted exposed adventuress, at Elburne House and Beckley
Court. What did the crowing cleverer aristocrats think of her now?
On Rose the blow fell bitterly. Was Evan also a foul schemer? Was he of
a piece with his intriguing sister? His close kinship with the Countess
had led her to think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by
his own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of
the great Mel’s brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them
merited, unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her
recent state of self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether
it really was in Nature’s power, unaided by family-portraits,
coats-of-arms, ball-room practice, and at least one small phial of
Essence of Society, to make a Gentleman.