“You shall know in the morning, early,” I said, “how your prayers have
been answered”; and she stumbled away, blind with tears.
George followed her, pausing only for a moment to inflict upon me one of
those grasps in which man assures man of understanding and allegiance,
and re-states the solidarity of sex. It hurt horribly, and I nursed my
hand for some moments; but it was comforting too.
It was late when I went to bed, for there was much to do and plan. I was
not too happy about the future and my new responsibilities, but one
thought as I turned out the gas gave me the purest joy—and that was that
I was not George Stratton.
* * * * *
Allinson had asked a great deal. It meant a kind of bondage for thirteen
years—and the years between thirty-four, my present age, and forty-seven
ought to be good ones. Should a young man dedicate them to a child not
his own? Ordinarily a young man would not, but my case was not quite
ordinary. A doctor automatically surrenders to his profession much of
his youthfulness. Some one has said that the roystering medical student
must be forgiven all when it is remembered how suddenly and completely he
has, on qualification, to be changed into a staid, sober and punctual
servant of the public for the rest of his days—yes, and his nights. And
I had always been a little old-fashioned, as we say, and the circumstance
of succeeding to so big a practice so early, and being accepted
favourably by so many of my father’s patients, had not impaired this
characteristic. I was therefore both by nature and by profession more of
a predestined guardian of another man’s child than most men even of
forty-four are.
All the same, it was a tremendous responsibility, and it might result—I
came back to this again and again—in a tremendous sacrifice. Because if
I agreed to be Rose’s foster-father, I should have to be thorough and
absolute. She might in time go to school, but while she was my child she
would be mine and no one else’s. I could not share the duty of bringing
her up. This means that the marriage upon which Mrs. Stratton had set
her mind would not materialize. Whether or not celibacy was going to
involve any kind of martyrdom for me I did not know; certainly up to the
present time I had not fallen in love or felt in danger of doing so; and
that is a good deal to say at thirty-four. But there were years ahead
famous for their susceptibility.
And then, as to education, a girl, even when one can give her adequate
attention, is a disquieting creature. One never knows of what she is
thinking, as she sits there, knitting, or apparently poring over a book,
or arranging flowers without a sound: more than thinking, plotting even.
A boy is simpler. To begin with, he is rarely being still, and for the
most part he wears his thoughts outside. As for a boy, if I had one to
bring up I don’t quite know what I should teach him, except that he must
not step away from fast bowling, and that it isn’t fair to get into a
railway compartment where the only other passengers are a pair of lovers.
During a wakeful night my thoughts traversed the ground again and again,
in unprogressive circles; but amid the dubieties that crowded on me this
steady question periodically challenged me—Could you let her be brought
up by that Stratton woman? Then, for the moment, I saw my course clear
and shining: only however to lose it again when the gigantic difficulties
of the task of education—made infinitely greater and more difficult by
the fact that I was considering them in the small hours, when no man’s
judgment is well-balanced—arose to darken the future.
Thus pondering and fearing, I fell asleep.
How long I should have overslept, as the result of this earlier
restlessness, had not some gravel rattled on the window, I cannot say. I
hastened to it and peered out. The sun was high, the scent of the garden
came up warm and fresh, and just below me was Rose herself, all strange
and pathetic in her stiff black clothes, lifting her transparent little
face upwards and calling “Dombeen, Dombeen. Oh, I do want you so.”
How could I have disregarded such a sign? Was it not an answer to Mrs.
Stratton’s prayer?
“I have decided finally to take charge of Rose, as her father wished,” I
wrote to Mrs. Stratton before she left for her own home.
* * * * *
My first duty now was to secure Hannah Banks; because it would be
necessary for Rose to have a nurse and steady companion, and I had never
cared greatly for the one in Allinson’s employ.
Hannah Banks, who years before had been my own nurse, was now in
retirement at Lowestoft, living with a married niece on the annuity that
my father had left her; but she expressed her willingness to re-enter
service, and a day or so later her motherly old face beamed once more
upon me.
“To think of you,” said Hannah, “bringing up a child—and a little girl at
that—without anyone to help! The idea! Of course I came. I’m not as
strong as I used to be, but thank God, I’m tough.”
Rose took to her instantly, and they established themselves in a wing of
the house, which, for too long much too big for me, was now becoming
human again. Hannah was vigilant but not fussy: her especial qualities
were a kind heart and an unsleeping thoughtfulness. She could hardly
write her own name, and her reading was confined to the simplest words;
but what are reading and writing compared with the conduct of life? What
I wanted from Hannah was wholesome solicitude and old English simplicity;
I could supply the rest myself, and later on there would be some regular
lessons.
The fact that Hannah had stood in the relation of nurse also to me made
her a little contemptuous of my present parental airs. You can’t bring
up a boy from the cradle to boarding-school without detecting lapses from
the god, and these can be remembered even when he is adult and your
employer. Nor, after bringing up a boy like that, can you ever quite
lose the feeling that he is still something of an infant. Since, to nice
women, all men are still something of infants (and, if sensible, willing
to be so), this does not ordinarily matter; but the attitude may lead to
embarrassing results when one is endeavouring to cut a figure of
authority, with a child of one’s own or in one’s own charge. How can a
lecture on hygiene be effective when in the middle of it an officious old
lady crosses the lawn with a pair of goloshes in her hands, and says:
“Now, Master Julius, put these on directly. The grass is wringing wet!”
For I was still Master Julius to Hannah.
* * * * *
There was, besides Hannah, Suzanne. It was one of my peculiarities—and
how the countryside came to forgive it I never understood—to employ a
French cook. I had found her on a walking tour with Theodore Allinson in
Normandy in 1880; she was keeping a wayside inn near Lillebonne, and her
husband having just died, and there being no children, she longed to get
away to a totally new environment. She was then about thirty-two. Since
she made wonderful soups out of nothing and could set a perfect omelette
before you almost before the order was given, I suggested that she might
like to try England and take service with me; and she jumped at the idea;
and with me she remained, capable, quick and amusing.
Her French was far from the French of Paris, but she had the rapid
Parisian gift of commentary, with a homely provincial sagacity added.
The acquirement of English she disdained, but just as sailors go round
the world on the one word “savvy,” so did she, with a similar economy,
contrive to make herself understood in the house and the village.
Indeed, she went farther than to refuse to acquire English, she forced
French on us, so that, for example, we entirely gave up “going to bed”:
we used instead to “alley coshy.”
Rose was devoted to Suzanne and she assimilated a large number of her
phrases—all of which, I knew only too well, would have to be unlearned
when she came under the control of a real Mademoiselle. But for the
present it was more important that the child should be happy with this
broad-bosomed kindly Norman, and whatever bad pronunciation she was
getting was more than compensated for by the attainment of certain
secrets of the cuisine. Suzanne could not read a word, but the last atom
of flavour was conserved in every dish that she sent to table; and what
is literature compared with cooking? One is shadow and the other is
substance. She had no culture. In vain for her had her fellow Norman,
Gustave Flaubert (whose statue she had no doubt seen in Rouen), toiled
all his life after the elusive epithet; but her apple-jelly was more than
novels and her salads were works of art. I used to look at her, serene
among her pots and pans or gathering lettuces in the garden, and reflect
again how little education has to do with the real progress of the world
or the happiness of mankind.
Naturally enough, Hannah did not appreciate Suzanne. Like a good rural
Englishwoman, she mistrusted all foreigners in general, and in the
present case the feeling was aggravated by jealousy, and by pique that
her own darling Rose could understand the foreigner’s gibberish where she
herself could not. But the house was so managed that the two women
seldom met. Hannah ate in her and Rose’s own rooms, while Suzanne rarely
left the kitchen.
* * * * *
I have said something of Rose’s infirmary for crippled animals. With
these creatures and Hannah and Suzanne and the maids and Briggs and
myself, she would have had company enough; but there were others always
ready to listen to her. There was, for instance, Mr. Wellicum.
In those primitive days I not only prescribed medicines but supplied
them, and Mr. Wellicum was my dispenser, as he had been my father’s
before me. He had seemed an old man when I was Rose’s age and ventured
into his aromatic domain, and to her therefore he must have worn an air
of extreme antiquity. There was this difference in his attitude to the
two of us: he had disliked, or at any rate discouraged, my visits, but he
rejoiced to have Rose about him. He was a short, bow-legged, grizzled
man, very hairy and ursine, known to the villagers as “Crusty Bob,” and
by playing tricks on him the boys increased his bearishness; but to Rose
he was the mildest and most subservient slave. Others, including myself,
his timid employer, were allowed in the dispensary itself only with
ungracious reluctance—the lobby by the trap-door in the window being the
place of the public—but Rose could do as she wished there, always on the
one condition that she must not taste. He even permitted her to help in
pill rolling, and not a few of the village children have been known to
beg her collusion in seeing that their physic was made less nasty.
* * * * *
Those were the days before motor-cars—I did not see a motor-car until I
was well over forty or own one until I was fifty—when a country doctor
and his horse were allies and friends. I rode a little, but mostly
drove, and Silver and I were on terms of the closest intimacy. She was a
chestnut mare with a whitey-grey mane and tail: hence her name.
Speed, no doubt, is a great asset, especially for a busy doctor in a
straggling district, but I shall always hold that we lost spiritually
more than we gained materially when we substituted machinery for the
horse. The horse, the school-book used to tell us, is the friend of man;
and man needs friends. Petrol is his servant or his master, even his
tyrant; petrol smoothes no difficulties, heals no wounds, restores no
vitality, as a horse could do. On the other hand, justice compels me to
admit that it has taken me to many a sick-bed at a pace that Silver would
have thought unjust and have found impossible. In addition to Silver I
had a bay mare named Jenny, as a second string. Both were affectionate
and gentle, and Rose adored them and took astonishing and terrifying
liberties with them. Some part of the ritual of grooming, in which she
was proud to assist, she even carried into her own toilet. The peculiar
hissing sound which ostlers make when they are curry-combing, Rose used
to imitate (Hannah told me, with tears of mirth) as she brushed her hair.
That part of the ancient Persians’ simple system of education for their
sons which bore upon the management of a horse (to shoot straight, manage
a horse, and tell the truth, was the complete curriculum) is being missed
to-day. I don’t pretend that Rose could manage one in the full sense of
the word, but she had the qualities which such mastery demands—courage
and confidence, mental quickness and sympathy, and a steady hand. It is
not to a country’s good when the horse disappears and oil and metal take
its place, for the management of a car is far less educative. To-day,
roughly speaking, only farm-boys and stable-lads are being taught as the
wise old Persians would wish.
* * * * *
Then there were the neighbours: the Rector and his family; Colonel
Westerley and his wife; the old people at the post office, and the
butcher and the baker, and, what is more to the point, the butcher’s and
the baker’s errand boys. Rose was on the best of terms with all of
these.
Some were too anxious to share in her upbringing. I exempt the butcher’s
boy and the baker’s boy from this charge, and the old couple at the post
office are honourably acquitted—or as honourably as persons can be who
repeat telegrams to the whole village—but the Rector’s wife longed for
Rose to join her two daughters in their lessons, and Mrs. Westerley was
consumed by a desire to transform her into a pianist. The rectory offer
I declined, but Rose sat for a while at Mrs. Westerley’s instrument,
until it was decided that whatever genius she might possess lay in some
other direction than music.
Mrs. Westerley, whose garden marched with mine on the other side, we
could do without; but Colonel Westerley was one of Rose’s special
intimates. And when I say Colonel, I mean Colonel. I mean an elderly
upright man with a white moustache and courtly manners, who took the
chair at meetings, and played a good game of croquet, and acted as
sidesman on Sundays; the kind of army aristocrat who, by presenting the
plate with a certain military éclat, made it a double privilege for the
worshipper to drop in a shilling for God. I have to explain and amplify
in this way because now, after the War, when I am writing, the word
Colonel means nothing of the kind. Mere youths are colonels. A major
called on me yesterday with a smooth-shaven white face and a baggy
umbrella, to ask for my signature to some teetotal appeal. If I had
trodden on his toe he would very likely have said that it was his fault.
The word “Gad” has quitted the language.
Colonel Westerley had all the mildness and Christianity that, in some odd
way, can seed in the composition of a certain kind of army man, to
blossom forth in his retirement. One does not notice the seeding, but
the flowers are very visible. He had been in India most of his life: had
quelled border insurgencies and killed his country’s foes without a
tremor; but now, among the croquet hoops and William Allen Richardsons,
he was the soul of gentle courtesy and the Rector’s right-hand layman.
The Colonel took over my “Times” at half-price at three o’clock every
afternoon, and we shared a library subscription. Mrs. Westerley knitted
continually for bazaars, and read aloud every evening until it was time
for Patience and then bed.
Rose and the Colonel were great friends. I used to see her watching him
as he pruned and grafted, and asking him searching questions as to the
perils of life in India. When he corroborated her suspicions and stated
that it was really true that snakes got into the bath through the hole
that lets the water out, she instituted a hostility to enter that
receptacle and be washed all over that was very distressing to her nurse.
The Colonel’s stories of man-eating tigers had less serious results. The
very good case which he made for himself as an intrepid fighting man and
terror of the jungle deteriorated, however, when Rose discovered one day
that he had not a single Indian coin to display to her. To see a rupee
in the flesh, so to speak, had suddenly become a necessity, second only
to that of beholding a real live anna, which she associated in some
curious way with Hannah Banks; and the incompetent old warrior had
neither. How one could leave India and not bring any such souvenirs
away, Rose could not comprehend. An ivory model of the Taj Mahal,
proffered in lieu of coinage, had no effect whatever, not even when
fortified by the Colonel’s word-picture of the original by moonlight.
* * * * *
I hardly need say that many of my patients, even the serious ones, took
the liveliest interest in Rose, and since nothing is so vexing to the
matron and even the spinster as the spectacle of a single man bringing up
a young girl, I was naturally well supplied with advice. All my patients
asked about her, but as for the hypochondriacs, they made Rose a staple
of conversation—conversation being their principal requirement from a
doctor. Having reported on the progress of their hypothetical maladies,
they got to work at once on Rose’s progress. What was she doing? What
was she reading? Had I any new amusing remarks of hers to repeat?
I must not give the impression that I was wilfully taking fees from these
people for nothing. They had just enough discomfort or fear of illness
to warrant the request that I should add them to my visiting list, and I
was never an Abernethy, to call them humbugs and refuse to waste my time
under their roofs; but with less money or more to do they would have
forgotten my existence. Indolence and riches, in others, are the medical
profession’s best friends.
A country doctor in those days was valued for his sociability as much
almost as for his skill, and there are cases when a pleasantry or two can
do more good than the whole pharmacopoeia. If he can see the opportunity
of being useful as a mind-doctor as well as the ordinary repairer of
disordered bodies, I think that the practitioner should embrace it and
take a fee for it without a blush.
My own circle of semi-friendly patients was large. There was Mrs.
O’Gorman, for instance. Mrs. O’Gorman was the widow of an Irish
landlord, a little lady, then between fifty and sixty, with a great gift
of shrewdness and no belief in mincing her words, who was just
sufficiently rheumatic to get three half-hours a week of my society, and
perhaps an extra one if I chanced to be passing that way on an irregular
day. She lived in luxury in a big house, with a companion called Julia,
and read everything that was published both in books and periodicals; and
everything that she read reminded her of something. You know the elusive
Irish mind leaping from branch to branch; well, she had that, and a
marvellous memory at the back of it. But whatever might be her theme,
she always came back to Rose, who now and then was deposited at her house
by me in the morning and picked up on my return from my rounds, replete
with exotic food and burdened with gifts.
“And how’s the colleen to-day?” Mrs. O’Gorman would say, after the latest
ravages wrought by uric acid on her system had been carefully described.
“Damn the stuff! What’s it for, anyway? Just to keep doctors in
affluence, I suppose. If the good God had asked me to help Him in making
the world, which I’d take shame to put my signature to as it is, I’d have
left uric acid out of it. Yes, and doctors too! Every doctor is a
confession of failure on the Creator’s part.
“Have you read the article in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ on Genesis? Is it
the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ Julia, or the ‘Contemporary’? It doesn’t
matter which, they’re both half a crown and not worth it. The man sweeps
away the Garden of Eden like dust on a piano. And that reminds me, we’re
going to London to hear Arpeggio. They say he’s better than Liszt,
although he has short hair. But he’s a devil among the ladies, just the
same.
“It’s odd, isn’t it, how these musicians—Julia, go and get the Doctor a
glass of sherry and some cake—it’s odd, isn’t it, that no woman can
resist them? Now, a fiddler I can understand. He stands up to it and
makes those fine movements with his delicate hands; but a pianist, all
bent over the box, banging away—what can they see in him?
“And tell me, what are you doing about Rose’s music? She ought to be
taking lessons. A girl’s out of it if she can’t play some instrument,
and it’s useful too if a dance should be improvised. Let’s see—has she
good arms? If she has, she ought to play the fiddle, or the harp, only
the harp’s so clumsy to take about. You want a cab every time. But it’s
a lovely instrument. I heard Jenny Lind sing to a harp—the sweetest
voice. There’s some fellow in the ‘Saturday Review’ this week says that
Patti has never been approached: but Jenny Lind was worth a thousand of
her. Patti has too much art: you notice it; Jenny Lind made you forget
everything but the music. Has Rose any voice? I must get her to sing to
me when you bring her over next. But you bring her so seldom.
“There’s no need to be jealous of me, you know, I’m only an old woman.
But you’ll be getting jealous of all the men directly; you won’t be able
to help it. Every day she’s growing up, you know, and every day some boy
you’ve probably never heard of is growing up too—you don’t know where he
is, and Rose doesn’t know, and he’s never heard of Rose. There he is,
somewhere, in his little Eton jacket, with big ears and a snub nose as
likely as not, and every minute he’s drawing nearer to Rose and she’s
drawing nearer to him. And neither of them knowing a thing about it!
Isn’t that terrible? Just Fate arranging everything and we all out in
the cold; and no one so out in the cold as the parents and guardians!
“And what about yourself,” she went on, for she was remorseless where the
relations of the sexes were concerned. “How old are you? Thirty-five,
shall we say? And Rose is seven. Ah! Then when she’s twenty you’ll be
forty-eight—the dangerous age! That’s the time for you to look out,
Doctor. You’ll want all your strength of mind then, because we mustn’t
marry our wards, you know.”
“Mrs. O’Gorman!” I protested.
“Nonsense!” she went on. “What’s the matter with facing the facts? If
every one would do it this world would be a sweeter place. But why don’t
you marry, anyway? What’s the matter with us? Do you hate us?”
“I’m too busy,” I said. “Life is too full.”
“Wait till you lose your pretty Rosy, and then you’ll be feeling the
draught,” she retorted. “Ah, Doctor, Doctor, it’s a sad old age you’re
building up for yourself; and you don’t play cards either. A sad old
age!”
“Doctors shouldn’t have wives any more than actors should,” I would say.
“No one should marry unless he is going to keep some kind of hours; and
doctors can’t. Not at least until they’re specialists and receive
patients in Harley Street from ten to one; and by that time they’re
crystallized fossils. Parsons should marry—and, as a matter of fact,
conspicuously do so—and stockbrokers and lawyers and country squires and
most other people; but not doctors.”
“Well, it’s just as well for my rheumatism that your father had different
views,” was the reply. “Not that you do me any good,” she hastened to
add, “but it’s comforting to have a doctor about the place, and you’re
something to talk to. You listen well.”
So she would run on.
But she did not talk like this when Rose was with her. She drew then on
her memory and fancy for all that was gay and amusing; brought out old
scrap-books; disinterred a musical-box from the lumber-room; and had an
amazing ancient dolls’-house put into thorough repair both inside and
out. Rose was happier with Mrs. O’Gorman than with anyone but, I hope,
me.
* * * * *
I had, of course, patients in whose houses I should not care for Rose to
be intimate; and it was not easy for me to repel their friendly advances.
But Rose was capable, if she met them when out walking, of replying to
overtures with the firmest refusals. Child as she was, she knew her own
mind, and she was not old enough or weak enough to have any preoccupation
with the feelings of others. It was not callousness: not at all; but it
was not in her nature to adapt herself—not yet, nor would it ever be to
any great extent, except for the most serious reasons. She was in a
playground, and her play had so far always been with congenial spirits:
why should it be otherwise? So she felt.
I had been brought up differently. I had been brought up to think of
others; to spare sensibilities even to the extent of prevarication; to
say “No” where I would rather have said “Yes” if I thought that “No”
would be more agreeable to the other person involved: to pass the salt;
to be self-denying. Rose’s father had no such attitude towards others,
nor did he impose it on his daughter. He had considered the world his
orange, and Rose was disposed to do the same. She had no tendency to be
grasping or greedy; she had that sense of hospitality to which politeness
is a corollary; while her good humour and sense of fun and laughter also
made her naturally a dispenser of happiness. But nothing prevented her
from telling the truth, neither fear nor favour. How I used to envy her
this!
Every teacher must learn something from the taught, I suppose, though it
be only an idea of his own ignorance. And I found myself learning from
Rose all the time. Her simplicities rebuked my complexities; her
innocence disturbed my sophistication. But most I learned from her not
only the importance of truth-telling in the social system, but the
superior excellence of it in the difficult scheme of civilized life. By
always telling the truth one saves oneself from a multitude of fatiguing
cares. I don’t say that Rose knew this, even subconsciously; she told
the truth because it was in her nature. But it might also have been her
privilege. Of all people, a pretty woman has least reason to put herself
to the trouble of inventions; because she would always be forgiven.
It was of course too late for me to become truthful spontaneously, as
Rose could be; but under her influence, child as she was and fully grown
man (if any man is ever fully grown) as I was, I learned to think twice
and be truthful on the second thought. I learned, too, through her
unconscious tuition, that other people’s feelings are rarely as delicate
as we fancy them, and often never worth serious consideration; at any
rate, that the health of one’s own soul is more important than the
comfort of anyone else.
I speak of myself as a teacher, but I had dispensed no formal
instruction. Whatever Rose got from me was in the ordinary course of
conversation, at breakfast and in the garden and at odd times, and
perhaps particularly at night, when she had gone to bed and I sat with
her for half an hour and, according to Hannah, excited her little brain.
I am sure that I have advised thousands of parents not to overdo the
good-night gossip; but doctors rarely practise what they preach.
I used to read to her too; and if she had not wanted the same stories so
often we might have consumed hundreds of books together. Ruskin’s “King
of the Golden River” (does anyone read that now?) was one of her
favourites, and I could not substitute a word in it without being
detected. That legend is, of course, a lesson too.
All that I had to offer was a _gradus_ to life. The real instructors
would come later, with their geography and history and mathematics and
languages and so forth. The most that I hoped for was that, indirectly,
the effect of my general attitude to things might be that Rose some day
would be able to avoid a few pitfalls. To get positive qualities into
another is more difficult than to implant a certain caution. “Oh, you
men are all alike!” I felt that if I could make it impossible for Rose
ever to say that, I should have done something far better than to fill
her mind with facts and figures.
* * * * *
Among all the trivialities of our life together in those early days it is
difficult to make a selection of saliences. Rose was not a remarkable
child in any way, except perhaps in the lack of special qualities. She
was quiet and self-contained and, I used to think, very sensible: perhaps
her general good sense was her strongest point. She was not a universal
sympathizer, but where her affections were set she was very tenacious in
her kindnesses and even tendernesses. I remember an incident which
illustrates this characteristic.
We had at that time a dog named Rex, a Clumber spaniel, which all too
seldom I took out shooting. He was called mine, but in reality was
Rose’s, fixing himself to her like a shadow, and being miserable when she
was out and he had not been allowed to go too.
Well, one evening at the time when Rose took out his great dish of broken
victuals, Rex was nowhere to be found. He had never strayed before, and
we had no cheering theory to propound to the child to account for his
conduct. Other theories we kept to ourselves, such as the possibility of
a thief having enticed Rex away, or that he had followed a hare into
preserved ground and had got into a trap, or even had been shot. A new
keeper on one of the neighbouring estates had been heard to vow
extermination to any dog that he caught trespassing.
No one allowed Rose to hear conjectures of this kind, but we all rather
obviously shared her anxiety, and she was able to see through our forced
airs of assurance.
The hours went on, and still no Rex. Rose’s bed-time came and was long
passed, but she would not consent to leave the hall door. There she
stood, now and then calling, with the dish of food beside her.
Hannah was furious, but to no purpose. Dogs to her were just
dogs—four-footed creatures, useful to bark at night and protect the
house, but given to importing mud into houses and not blameless as to the
encouragement of fleas. Many a conflict have we had, she and I, over
Rex’s charter to roam where he would, upstairs or down. On this occasion
we came to a wider cleavage than ever, for Hannah (and, from her point of
view, very rightly) wished Rose to go to bed, whereas I, although
conscious that as a habit such vigils would be very bad for her, was
inclined to accede to her tearful wishes and allow her on this occasion
to wait up. Such evidences of solicitude for her dog were very
gratifying.
“I can’t go to bed, Dombeen, until I know,” she said, and she had my
sympathy.
“You shall stay up,” I assured her, “till—till—”
“Till he comes back?” she supplied eagerly.
“No, I couldn’t promise that,” I said. “You see, he may have been found
wandering by some one who has tied him up till the morning and will then
bring him home. And you couldn’t wait up till then, could you?”
“Yes I could,” said Rose.
“Well even if you could, I couldn’t let you,” I said. “But you shall
stay up till—till midnight, say. Till the clock strikes twelve.”
“Oh no, later than that,” said Rose. “Mayn’t I wait till three?”
We compromised upon half-past one, and Hannah’s opinion of me sank still
lower.
“Calls himself a doctor!” I fancy I heard her muttering.
Meanwhile, in his devotion, old Wellicum was scouring the neighbourhood
in one direction, and Briggs in another, and the stable-boy in a third.
They straggled back at about midnight, and at half-past one I moved the
closure and we all went to bed, fearing the worst.
It was just three when I was awakened by a furious knocking at the door
and a joyous voice crying, “Dombeen, Dombeen, he’s come back!”
And so he had, the rascal, after what we discovered later to have been
simply a distant amatory expedition.
Rose, it seems, although she had consented to go to bed, had got up again
and had been sitting by the window until she had seen love’s pilgrim
creep in.
Downstairs we went, in our dressing-gowns, and fed him and petted him as
though he were a hero instead of a mere voluptuary. What kind of a
welcome Rex had expected, and what he thought of the surprising turn that
things had taken and our manifestations of delight, I can only guess, but
being a Clumber he probably laughed long when at last he regained his
kennel.
* * * * *
It was when Rose was ten or eleven that the Hall, the big house of the
place, with a park around it, was bought by Sir Edmund Fergusson, and
local society was enriched by the addition of his family, which consisted
of Lady Fergusson and their only child, Ronald, or Ronnie, who was about
Rose’s own age.
The Fergussons naturally became my patients. Sir Edmund’s trouble was
gout, which, like most gouty people, he did nothing consistently to
check. Sporadically he was careful in his diet, but then would arrive a
temptation that he could not resist. A large part of all doctors’ lives
is taken up in scolding gouty patients for their imprudences and patching
them up into a condition to commit more.
Ronnie Fergusson had a tutor at that time, and Rose a governess; and
neither instructor was inclined to extend the working hours unreasonably.
During the playing hours the two children were much together. They had a
crow’s nest in one of the Fergussons’ trees, and an empty furnace-pit
under a disused greenhouse of mine served them as a robbers’ cave.
Ronnie’s parents having married late, he was more like their grandson
than son, and therefore a little lonely, and Rose’s companionship was
exactly what his nature needed.
* * * * *
Until Rose was thirteen I knew nothing but serenity in my
foster-fatherhood. But then she gave me a shock. It turned out to be a
false alarm in that it set up no precedent, but for a while I was
nervous.
I had decided to send her to school. Were my own pleasure the only
consideration I should have kept her at home, but a girl ought to be
among others, to learn give-and-take, adjustment, and so forth. Thirteen
was late, of course, but she was not quite like other girls—an only child
is always a little different—and the lateness did not matter.
In practical matters she already knew more than any of her teachers could
tell her. She knew a good deal about medicine and the care of invalids,
derived principally from Hannah, but a little from me; she had presided
at the tea-table for years and prepared the infusion like a Chinese
philosopher; she could make an omelette. She had a considerable store of
Norman patois. She had countless books, many of them far beyond her
years. It would probably have been better if she continued to remain at
home; but she was too normal to be denied ordinary procedure, or I was
too normal to have the courage to deny it her.
After many fruitless inquiries and inconvenient visits, I had allowed
Mrs. Stratton to find Rose a school. It was at Brighton, where more
young people seem to be taught than, judging by the passivity of the
fishermen on the railings, fish are drawn from the sea; and I was assured
that there was no more admirable establishment, and that Miss Saltoun was
the last word in sympathetic and cultured head-mistress-ship. I went to
see her and was more or less satisfied. Not wholly; but having had no
experience as a selector of educationalists, I let it go, especially as I
was more than pleased with the material conditions of the building—light,
air, and so forth.
Rose and I had a silent breakfast on the fatal day. She had been looking
forward to it with mixed feelings, sometimes glad to be joining such a
company of girls after so much isolation, sometimes forlorn indeed at the
thought of leaving her home. On the last evening she had broken down
completely; but in the morning she wore an expression of grim resolution,
which I admired too much to run the risk of dissolving it by talking
about any unsafe subject; and no subject seeming to be safe, I said
nothing.
Her farewell to the household was tearful; but she pulled herself
together to part bravely from me, and then she and Hannah drove off. It
was a double breaking up of tradition; for Hannah, after taking her to
Paddington and putting her into the hands of Mrs. Stratton, who would
convoy her to Victoria, where there were reserved compartments for the
school, was to go on to her home at Lowestoft, alas! for ever. She had
been growing more infirm and could no longer manage the stairs, and when
Rose came back for the holidays there was to be a new maid for her,
instead of our old friend. It was part of the new programme that Rose
was to be generally more self-reliant.
More self-reliant!
It was on a Tuesday that Rose departed. Just as I was finishing my soup
on the following Thursday evening, who should walk in but Rose and fling
herself on her knees beside me and shake with sobs?
There she knelt, with my hand on her head trying to allay the storm, for
minutes.
“O Dombeen!” she managed at last to say. “I couldn’t stay there.
It’s—it’s—horrid. You wouldn’t like me to stay there. Really you
wouldn’t.”
The fact that I didn’t ask her to explain, that I took it for granted
that she was right, will indicate at once the kind of fatalist that I
was, and our sub-conscious terms of understanding.
Rose was tired out—too tired to eat—and I am afraid that in the absence
of Hannah, whose loss was a terrible disappointment—for although Rose had
known of it she had not fully realized it—she cried herself to sleep.
I don’t pretend to have had much of a night’s rest myself, for such a
false start as this was no part of the educational programme. Theodore’s
phrase “bring her up to beat the band”—rang in my ears.
Was this beating the band? On the face of it, no. We must not run away.
And yet (I argued) to run away often implies more character than to
endure, and surely that was Rose’s case. She was not a coward, she was
not self-indulgent; that I knew. Nor did she imagine things. Child as
she was, I trusted her judgment and accepted the position. The school
was horrid, and she couldn’t stay there; that was enough. I knew her
sufficiently well to be sure that she would have put up with it if she
had believed that any good could result; but she knew the reverse and she
had acted accordingly. She had walked out of the house, found her way to
the station, and the pocket-money I had given her and her own
resourcefulness had done the rest.
The next morning I had a very pale and demure companion at breakfast.
She also had evidently been thinking, and had seen that thus to take the
law into her own hands was a proceeding of considerable magnitude—such
magnitude that she looked dwarfed under it. But although subdued and
_pianissimo_, there was no sign of weakness on her features. It may have
been a gigantic effort of independence, but she did not regret it.
I had sent to Brighton a reassuring telegram (crossing one from Osborne
House) on the previous evening, and on the arrival of a second telegram
from Miss Saltoun saying that she was on her way to see me, I dispatched
Rose to Mrs. O’Gorman’s for the day, with an explanatory note.
Not long afterwards a very indignant Miss Saltoun arrived for an
interview. Her idea no doubt was to take Rose back with her; but I had
no intention of permitting that. I did not even let them meet, to Miss
Saltoun’s intense surprise. Should she be still alive, I doubt if her
eyebrows have yet resumed their normal level, to such an altitude did she
lift them when I announced my decision.
“But it is fatal to let a child behave like this,” she said. “It is the
end of all discipline. What would come to the world if no one were
punished?”
I said that Rose would not lack punishment. Her shame in not being able
to remain at Brighton was punishment. She was not proud of herself at
all, I said, even though she couldn’t do anything else but run away.
“But suppose every child ran away!” said Miss Saltoun. “What would the
world come to!”
“It would probably be very good for the world,” I said. “Because only
children with character have the pluck to take such a step.”
“No one has ever run away from Osborne House before,” said Miss Saltoun.
“And probably no one ever will again,” I said.
“It will be very damaging to me,” she protested, “if it gets to be known,
as of course it must do. Of what did Rose complain?”