* * * * *
All went well for a few days. And then Ronnie, against my counsel, and
also against Rose’s, which usually prevailed, joined a party on a
bobsleigh, and was carried into the hotel, an hour later, with a
fractured leg and a vast variety of bruises. I let the Fergussons know,
assuring them that there was no danger, and together Rose and I, with the
assistance of a nurse, got him through. He was fairly patient, but his
disappointment was acute, and now and then under his weakness he broke
down. More than once I went into the room to find Rose soothing him as
though he were a baby. All his dependence came out, to be met by all her
tenderness. I had not thought she possessed such hidden stores of it.
I must confess to feeling miserably out in the cold most of the time, for
Ronnie, though he was as gay as possible with me, and brave enough under
the pain that his dressings inflicted, was happy only with Rose, and I
could not fail to see it. And he exacted far too much attention from
her. I hardly had any of her company. She could not do this or that
because Ronnie might want her; Ronnie would be lonely; she had promised
Ronnie to read to him; she had sworn that when he woke up, no matter at
what time, he should find her beside him. I admired her sense of
duty—and resented it too!
After a fortnight the Fergussons joined us, to supervise their son’s
recovery, and Rose and I went home, for she had her school and I my
practice; but I was conscious that not all of her was with me in the
train; and Ronnie’s parting from her, I realised, had been too emotional.
Suddenly he had kissed her as though his heart was breaking, and she had
almost to be torn away.
I have seen so many sick men under the influence of gratitude to their
nurses that I did not lay very much stress on this incident; but I could
not forget it. I wished, however, that Rose should, and during the
journey back I did all that I could to distract her. She was very quiet
at first, but gradually became more like herself, and by the time we
reached home and she began to prepare for school she seemed usually, at
any rate when with me, natural again and free from care. But away from
me? And when she was day-dreaming? It was at these times that I
realized again and bitterly how finite is our understanding of each
other. We live alone! I would have given anything to be able to
penetrate her thoughts, and help. But I could not.
Was she in love or merely reflective? Was she looking back or forward?
I longed to know, but could not ask.
Mrs. O’Gorman cheered me up. “It’s likely it’s nothing at all,” she
said. “Just a passing storm, even if that. Very few of the romances of
seventeen persist. I was like that myself: my heart was broken a dozen
times before I was Rose’s age, and at eighteen I seriously meditated
suicide because my violin teacher was married. It was in Dublin. I
remember to this hour the smell of the Liffey that came up to me as I
leaned over Carlisle Bridge one evening coming back from a lesson, and
pretended I wanted to drown myself and all my grief. No one could have
entered such water as that! And ten days later I had forgotten all about
the fiddler, and was inventing a novel with me the heroine and the hero
an actor at the theatre that week, who didn’t even know of my existence.
Maybe Rose will be like that. Don’t worry.”
Rose had only two more terms, and as she spent most of the Easter
holidays with a school-fellow, she did not meet Ronnie. During the few
days she was with me she seemed to be heart-whole; certainly there was no
suggestion of blighted affection, for her spirits were of the highest.
So Mrs. O’Gorman, I assumed, was right again.
* * * * *
It was just before Rose’s return from school for ever, in the summer,
that I had an unexpected visit from Mrs. Stratton, in the character of
the solicitous aunt. She arrived in the forenoon, and while doing
justice to lunch unfolded her purpose. Briefly it was to renew the
attack begun eleven years earlier, only now with perhaps more
reasonableness.
My unpardonable offence was still the same—celibacy, but it had assumed
an increased gravity. To be a bachelor of thirty-four in charge of a
child of seven was deplorable enough; but to be a bachelor of forty-five
in charge of a girl of eighteen was heinous. It was thus that her nasty
mind worked. And not only hers but, she assured me, countless other
persons’. In fact, I gathered from her remarks that the unsuitability of
my household was the only theme with which, in a few days’ time, the
world would be occupied.
“This morbid interest in my affairs is very disgusting,” I said.
Mrs. Stratton admitted it; but how could I deny that some handle was
being given? “You two alone here.”
“Well, I do deny it, absolutely,” I said. “Don’t you all know the
conditions of the will? Don’t you know that Rose is in my care until she
is twenty—that is to say, for two more years—entrusted to me by her
father, to act as a father in his place? It is monstrous to suggest that
I am not worthy of that confidence.”
“But I am not suggesting that,” Mrs. Stratton replied indignantly.
“Of course you are,” I said. “The mere fact that you come here and put
these ideas into my head is tantamount to a charge, an indictment.”
“I don’t mean that,” she protested.
“It doesn’t matter whether you mean it or not: the effect is the same.
By bringing your indecent suspicions here you are hoping to make it
impossible for me any more to be natural with this girl.”
“No, no!”
“Yes, yes,” I replied. “Excuse me if I speak with plainness, but I feel
strongly about it. It is abominable. Don’t you believe that decent
living and pure affection are possible in this world?”
“I am sure they are, but I am troubled about my niece’s—my brother’s only
child’s—good name.”
I thanked her sarcastically for the compliment. I was conscious that I
was being rude, but I could not control myself. There are some persons
who always draw out our inferior qualities, just as the companionship of
others can increase the value of our character by fifty per cent. Mrs.
Stratton invariably evoked my worst side. Any fine edge that I possessed
was blunted when we were together.
“It is what people may think and say that is so disturbing to me,” she
explained. “You know how they talk.”
“I am learning,” I said. “But anyone over thirty-five should have
acquired an indifference to public opinion.”
“That is a counsel of perfection,” she replied. “In ordinary life we are
all governed by it, or at any rate we are largely influenced. It would
be heart-breaking to me if I thought that people were saying horrid
things about Rose and you. Mind, I don’t say that they are talking
already,” she conceded. “But they’ll begin very soon.”
“How soon?” I asked.
“I can’t say with any definiteness. How could I?”
“Well,” I said, “I want to know. It is your business to tell me. Rose
comes back on Wednesday. Will they begin on Thursday?”
“But you’re being absurd.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I want to know. I must arrange things. Will
they begin on Friday? Remember—a girl of eighteen!—eighteen is just the
age for these people to gloat over: eighteen and forty-five, what a
titbit for you all!”
“Please don’t mix me up in this,” said Mrs. Stratton indignantly.
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “What a titbit for every one else! But,
anyhow, remember that this girl of eighteen will have been alone in her
guardian’s house two whole days by Friday, with nothing but the maids and
whatever good character he may have built up for himself to protect her.
May I safely take no steps till Friday?”
Mrs. Stratton was becoming very cross. “You’re being ridiculous,” she
snapped.
“Not at all,” I said. “Logical merely. Very well then,” I went on. “If
we may have two days, why not three? And if three days and there is no
public clamour, and the windows are not broken by the Association for
Getting Morality into Others or the Society for Suspecting Every One
Else, perhaps we could have a week of innocent companionship, Rose and I?
I have not unnaturally been looking forward to it. And if one week, why
not two? Surely you must see that I am entitled to know this?”
“I can’t think why you never married,” was her reply. “Don’t you see how
much wiser that would have been? Everything would have been simplified.”
“Rose and I have got on very well alone,” I said.
“But how much nicer for Rose to have had a woman’s guidance?”
“Why?” I retorted. “On all questions touching life, worldly education
and so forth, a man can be as instructive; and in so far as
protectiveness goes he can be as tender and as thorough. What remains
girls get by instinct. And Rose likes me: that’s another great asset.
Supposing that she did not like my wife?”
“But that’s being too fantastic.”
“Very well, then. Supposing that my wife didn’t like Rose? Women can be
very disapproving of each other—very jealous.”
“All this doesn’t affect the main thing,” said Mrs. Stratton. “I am
still worried by the extreme impropriety of you and my niece living here
alone.”
“Then tell me,” I said, “what you propose—for you must have some
proposition in your mind.”
“Rose could come to us,” said Mrs. Stratton. “We are planning to go to
the Italian Riviera for the winter—to Nervi.”
“But on returning,” I said, “there would be the same opportunities for
calumny.”
“Might it not be possible to have a companion for her?” Mrs. Stratton
asked. “Some nice woman to live here? I know of one I could recommend.”
“No,” I said, not without emphasis, “it might not, I will not have any
nice woman here. Besides, if I did, what would be the result? Simply
more suspicions! I should be thought bigamous instead of merely
monogamous.”
“Oh no!” said Mrs. Stratton. “I meant an elderly woman.”
“Good Heavens!” I exclaimed.
* * * * *
Mrs. Stratton’s visit was disturbing. I had been looking forward to two
years of Rose’s company before the time arrived when she was twenty and
would probably want to be independent, and I thought I was entitled to
it. These two years were to be very precious—a kind of reward, if you
like, for my foster-parental solicitude; and now they were threatened.
It was not public opinion that I was fearing, but the self-conscious
restrictions that were being forced on me to the ruin of easy natural
familiarity. I should always now be wondering if this or that excursion
were wise, or what constructions the beastly world would be putting on
this or that occurrence. Nothing could be simple and unselfconscious any
more!