“RED IS THE ROSE.”
The four roads which met at Sales Cross were the four which went
everywhere in the district. “You can’t go anywhere without going by
Sales Cross,” said Bella, basing her opinion on the number of people
who had passed while she was waiting for Bill and Polly on that April
afternoon. None of these travellers were mentioned by name except Mr.
Jack Dawson, who could hardly be said to have passed since he was still
there when the pony-chaise came in sight. He looked, too, as if he had
meant to stay some time, seeing that he had dismounted from his horse
and was standing, with the bridle over his arm, so deeply absorbed in
conversation that he did not notice the approaching carriage. Bella
explained later that he got down to help her free herself from the long
bramble she had twisted round her ankles while gathering primroses a
few minutes earlier. From the conversation which ensued between the two
elder cousins Bill gathered that Jack Dawson had had something to do
with Bella’s second Sunday afternoon at Ashelton being less dull than
the first.
But she did not listen very attentively; Polly’s eloquence had not much
interest for her, especially since, during the drive from Gurnett,
she had settled her own differences with her cousin, telling exactly
what she pleased of the doings at Wood Hall. There had been a battle
royal during that drive conducted with a good many words, and, it is
to be feared, some vigour of expression on both sides. But it had its
advantages, it was the first time that Bill and Polly had crossed
swords as equals, and each understood the other the better for doing
so; also it gave Polly a further indication that Bill was growing
up,--“Though not in the way we should wish,” as she said to Bella with
melancholy dignity. “No, Bella,” she went on as her listener showed no
signs of distress at the news, “Bill is not a lady, and nothing will
ever make her one.”
To which Bill agreed, adding: “I don’t believe I have got all the
instincts and so on, and I’m sure I don’t feel things the way I ought.
I suppose I have got a little bad blood somewhere.”
“Somewhere!” Polly’s sniff was impressive. “With your father--well! we
need say no more.”
“Considering what you have already said,” replied Bill, “I think you
need not.”
Bella wondered what had been said, but she did not hear, for soon
afterwards they reached Haylands, where Theresa declared herself
delighted to receive the two visitors instead of one. Later on, she
heard of Bill’s other doings, and with them she was not so well
pleased. She was distressed as well as angry when she was told about
the visit to Wood Hall.
Polly had been much opposed to telling her anything about it. “Leave it
alone,” she counselled; “it can’t be altered now. There will only be a
great fuss, and how shall I look for letting you go?”
But Bill disagreed. It would not be honest, she said.
“None of it was honest,” retorted Polly; and certainly the part she
took upon herself was open to question, although, no doubt, it was
the one best fitting the situation. “I thought it better to let her
go to-day,”--so she concluded a most able explanation of affairs to
Theresa. “You see, to-day I was with her; another day she might have
been alone. She was certain to go, sooner or later, with or without
me,--she is so dreadfully obstinate--and so I was determined that she
should go under the most favourable circumstances.”
Theresa agreed, and blamed Bill severely; but Bella remarked: “You
stayed outside for her good, I suppose, Polly?”
“I stayed outside,” Polly replied with dignity, “because she would not
let me come in without a scene.”
The truth of this statement was obvious and effective. Indeed Polly’s
manner while at Haylands was altogether effective; more especially
when, on their first arrival, they found Mrs. Dawson talking to
Theresa on business connected with the Church Missionary Society. Mrs.
Dawson had the cause of missions very much at heart; she attended many
meetings and paid many visits in connection with it, with what exact
result to the cause no one knew, but doubtless it was beneficial. The
principal results of the call on Theresa was entirely unconnected with
missions, being the postponement of Bill’s confession for half an hour
and the social opportunity afforded Polly.
Polly made such good use of the occasion that Mrs. Dawson, a rather
imposing personage, unbent to quite a rare extent. She even hoped that
Miss Hains would be able to come to her tea-party next day with her
cousin, Miss Alardy. Polly regretted she could not do so, since she was
unfortunately obliged to return to Wrugglesby in the morning.
“And I really did regret it too,” she informed the others when they
were discussing Mrs. Dawson late that evening; “I wish I had been
staying on here.”
“We could not both have gone,” said Bill, for whom the invitation had
already been accepted; “there’s only the one skirt, you know.”
“It is my skirt.”
“But you have lent it to Bill,” Bella said; “besides she is the
youngest, and has never been to anything yet.”
Polly did not consider this a very valid argument, though, as she
said, it really did not matter since she could not stay any longer at
Ashelton.
It was at bedtime that this discussion took place. Bella was to sleep
with Bill, and Polly had come into their room to brush her hair and
edify them with her views on several subjects. The fact that she did so
in Bill’s presence showed plainly that she recognised her as something
like an equal.
“I will tell you all about the tea-party,” Bill said, feeling rather
greedy in that the festivity had fallen to her share.
“Yes, but you will not be able to do as I should,” Polly answered
regretfully. “I made an impression on Mrs. Dawson this afternoon; I
should go on making one if I were to see her again, a good impression.”
Bill laughed irreverently.
“Don’t be rude, Bill.” Polly’s manner was momentarily that of an elder
and teacher, but almost immediately she dropped it and returned to the
terms of familiar intercourse. She at least possessed the merit of
adapting herself quickly to altered circumstances and relationships.
“My dear girls,” she said, sitting down in the one easy-chair the room
boasted, “one has to make good impressions, one never knows when they
may be useful.”
“You have no use for Mrs. Dawson,” Bella said quickly.
“No, she does it to keep her hand in, for pure pleasure and practice,
and because she can’t help it. She would try to make a good impression
on us if there were no one else.”
This was Bill’s opinion, but Polly only said, “You are a silly child,”
and began to put her hair into curl-papers, and at the same time giving
the cousins her views on many things, notably on matrimony. On this
subject she had very decided opinions which she did not at all mind
expressing with a degree of frankness which shocked Bella.
“You are horrid, Polly!” she exclaimed at last.
“I have the courage of my opinions,” Polly retorted; “I say what others
think.”
“They do not think such things.”
Bill, who had hitherto paid small attention to the conversation,
debated this point in her mind as she sat perched on the bed in her
favourite position. “I don’t believe people think much at all,” was her
conclusion.
Polly told her that she knew nothing about it, but, nothing daunted,
she went on to explain herself, “They don’t think; they do things
because the things come along, do them by instinct, or impulse, or
something; they don’t half know what will happen. I am nearly sure
they don’t think about the before and after. Nobody can see the real
beginnings and ends, and some people don’t seem able to see even a
little bit to right and left,--I wonder why.”
Neither of the elder cousins was prepared to go into the question,
Bella possibly because she herself belonged to the class who cannot
look before and after, Polly, certainly because she wished to discuss
more practical matters. By way of putting an end to Bill’s speculations
she introduced the topic, suggested by her previous remarks, of their
own future.
“Say that you, Bella,” she said, “marry money,--”
“I sha’n’t do any such thing!”
“Oh, well--” and then followed another exposition of Polly’s views
which Bill lost little by not heeding. She had picked up the fairy-book
which she had taken to bed with her a few nights ago, and had become
too absorbed in its pages to hear what Polly said until the mention of
her own name arrested her attention.
“And what is to become of Bill?” said Polly, who had by this time
settled the future for the rest of them.
“There is the school she could help--”
“The school!” said Polly disdainfully. “What good would Bill be, what
can she do?”
“Nothing,” the culprit answered, before Bella could speak in her
defence. “It is quite true, I should be of no use. I don’t know what I
could do, unless, perhaps, be a general servant; they are scarce now,
and I can work like a steam-engine. I never get tired and I can get up
ever so early--you should just see how I can scrub and iron, and I can
cook a little too.”
“You ridiculous child!” laughed Bella. “Do you suppose we should ever
let you do that?”
“She might do worse,” was Polly’s opinion.
“She could not do that,” Bella replied emphatically; “neither Theresa
nor I would allow it. And Polly, you might as well say good-night now;
we want to go to sleep.”
Polly took her candle, casting a grotesque shadow of herself and her
curl-papers on the low ceiling. “Good-night,” she said with severity.
“I am glad you can sleep; I don’t find it so easy when I look forward
to what must happen.”
“Don’t look,” Bill called after her, “except at your candle; look at
that, and mind you don’t spill the grease.”
None the less Bill lay awake a long time, thinking not only of the
future but also of the post which might almost have been hers that
day were it not for the aunts and cousins. Also she thought of Bella
and her future, and from that she mentally went to Jack Dawson, who
appeared a very pleasant sort of person, and to Mrs. Dawson, who did
not, though in Bill’s opinion she was an entertaining one. At least she
had thought so when she sat meekly silent during the lady’s call that
afternoon.
On the next day she had another opportunity of studying Mrs. Dawson,
for that was the day of the state tea-party which Polly had so deeply
regretted missing. Polly and Bella had gone back to Wrugglesby, and
Bill was left in undisputed possession of the skirt. It was not
new, neither was it in the latest fashion, but Bill thought it very
beautiful, as she contemplated herself in her little mirror on Tuesday
evening. Of course one needed the best clothes the family could
muster for such an occasion as the present; the tea-party at Grays,
Mrs. Dawson’s house, was really quite an important social function
besides being the first which Bill had ever attended. She was somewhat
impressed and tremendously interested by everything, the solemn
mahogany grandeur of the bedroom where she and Theresa took off their
wraps, the spotless whiteness of the linen covers of the stair-carpets,
the giant hat-stand by which Robert waited for them in the hall.
The drawing-room was large; the main part of the furniture dated from
the Sixties, the wonderful blue of the upholstery being unmistakably
of that era. But the sundry tides of fashion that have swept through
the land since then had left a few deposits even in this conservative
house: some peacock-feathers and a silk-covered palm-leaf, a present
possibly in the decorative days; a small black table, a relic of
æstheticism; a rococo photograph-screen of later date,--a few such
things could be seen here and there. “They were given to her,” thought
Bill gazing earnestly at the immovable black-silk dignity of Mrs.
Dawson; “they were given by _her_.” This was Bill’s decision when her
eye lighted on a girl standing near the hostess. The girl was tall
and muscular, turned four and twenty, athletically built, and dressed
in the fashion of the day, the fashion which obtains in Ealing and
similar exclusive suburbs. Her face, it is true, did not express much,
but then other people’s faces do not as a rule express much, and she
naturally did not wish to do anything but what everyone else did. She
was doubtless an expert at lawn-tennis and hockey, and an authority
on the technique of golf. Probably she thought her aunt at Ashelton
much behind the times, though, as she informed her friends, she liked
staying with her: “It was such a deliciously unsophisticated place
still.”
Bill looked at her with interest and at first with some admiration,
for to her inexperienced eyes Miss Gladys Dawson was a new and fine
specimen of humanity. Miss Gladys Dawson looked at Bill only with a
careless curiosity, she found her a little odd, and wondered why she
had never seen her at Ashelton before. She also (and here came in the
insult) looked at the skirt. A light blazed up in Bill’s eyes, a light
that was almost like a red flame, and there rose in her heart a great
wrath and a feminine desire to pay back the offence, to criticise
in some way the offender and bring ridicule on her. Bill had never
felt the sentiment before, being in the main indifferent to opinions
of all sorts. Miss Dawson’s glance on herself would have passed
unnoticed; she cared nothing for criticism and had a very poor opinion
of herself,--but the skirt was another matter, Polly’s cherished
skirt which she had made with so much labour out of two old silk
dresses of Miss Brownlow’s! Bill felt that the look, half amused, half
supercilious, wholly, indescribably feminine in its critical survey,
was an insult to the absent Polly and cried aloud for vengeance. “I
wish I could do something,” she thought vindictively. “I wonder what
she would mind most.”
It was now six o’clock, and there was a general move to the dining-room
for tea. Mrs. Dawson had always dined at two and taken tea at six, and
she always would do so as long as she was able to dine and take tea
at all. She made no difference for visitors, except in the quantity
of food prepared, and in that respect she certainly planned lavishly.
The table that night was loaded with the dainties which have gone out
of fashion with six o’clock teas. Bill noticed everything carefully,
trying to remember all she could for the sake of her absent cousins.
There was a wonderful table-cloth, she observed, of fine unbleached
linen whereon drab dogs hunted drab stags over a greyish ground much
interspersed with drab trees whose leafy branches met in the centre
of the table and were hidden under the pot of a pink azalea. Arranged
everywhere, almost crowding each other off, were cakes both hot and
cold, so many of them that Bill could not taste them all. There were
also several preserves, notably one of pineapple, very sticky, very
difficult of manipulation, inspiring one (if that one were Bill) with a
desire to take the pot and a spoon to the store-room and eat in comfort
unobserved. “It wants practice,” Bill decided as she watched the ease
with which Mr. Johnson, who might reasonably be expected to have had
practice, managed the pineapple. “I expect he has been here heaps of
times before,” she thought, and no doubt she was right for he seemed
much at his ease. Mr. Perry, on the other hand, was never quite able to
forget the grocer’s shop when he sat down with Mrs. Dawson; he talked
nervously and rapidly all through the meal, forgetting his tea in his
anxiety to be polite, and remembering that he wanted a third cup when
everyone had finished and the tea-pot was dry. Bill felt sorry for Mrs.
Dawson when she saw her pouring tepid water through the tea-pot so as
to supply the late comer, sorrier still for Mr. Perry when he received
his large shallow cup and made manful efforts to drink its contents
while the guests waited for him.
Bill sat next to Mrs. Johnson, a placid matron, not much given to
general conversation; and as she returned becoming answers to the few
remarks made to her, she was voted by her neighbour to be “a nicely
brought-up girl.” Gladys Dawson, of course, was different; being
older, and “from London,” she was expected to talk, and she did do so;
in fact she took the lion’s share of the entertainment upon herself.
Mrs. Dawson was not averse to this, but, as Bill noticed, neither was
Gladys. “She likes it,” thought the silent watcher; and there came into
Bill’s mind, by reason of the insult offered to Polly’s skirt, a desire
which is a natural instinct in most of her more developed sisters,--the
desire to outshine the other woman.
“It would not be easy,” Bill thought, feeling that she did not know
much about the subjects of greatest interest to the ladies present;
but then, as she soon found, Miss Dawson did not either, and so wisely
confined herself to entertaining the men. Bill did not feel very
hopeful of her own powers in that direction, and before she could
make any definite plans her thoughts were interrupted by Mr. Dane’s
entrance into the drawing-room to which everyone had now returned.
Mr. Dane never joined these parties till after tea, on the excuse of
parish-work. After the little disturbance created by his entrance had
subsided, and he had shaken hands with everybody, Bill found that he
had taken the chair next to her. She knew that he wanted to hear if
she had been to Wood Hall, and she was quite ready to tell him. It was
easy enough to do this unnoticed in the buzz of general conversation;
and accordingly she told him how she and Polly had driven to Wood
Hall, how Polly had waited outside, and how Mr. Harborough had laid
no fresh conditions upon her. This was all very well, but it was not
so well when she went on to talk of Mr. Harborough’s loneliness, and
so, incidentally, of her suggestion of a paid companion, and his offer
of the post to herself. “Of course he did not mean it really,” she
concluded; “it was only in fun, but for a moment I thought he meant
it.”
“What made you think he did not mean it?”
“What he said afterwards;” and she related all that followed. “He meant
he would have to marry me before they would let me come,” she said,
laughing a little.
But Mr. Dane did not laugh. “Yes, marry him,” he said, “marry him for
Wood Hall, for his name and position,--would you do that?”
“I did not have the chance; he did not ask me really; it was all fun.”
“Have you told your cousins of the fun?”
The old man was looking earnestly at her, waiting for her answer, and
she hesitated before she gave it. She plainly heard Mrs. Perry saying,
“I never had a sitting of eggs from the Possets turn out badly,” before
she said, “No, I have not told them.” And she wondered why she had not,
and why she never would, for she knew then that she never would.
“If he had meant it, would you have taken him and Wood Hall and the
name, and the little you know, and the infinitely more which you do not
know?”
“No,” she answered frankly. “I would like Wood Hall immensely; I would
do a good deal for a place like that--I don’t believe I would be too
particular what; but I could not marry him. I could not marry anyone; I
could not possibly be cooped up with one person. I believe I would like
more than anything else to be a gipsy and wander from place to place,
mending chairs and stealing fowls.”
Mr. Dane did not reprove the lax morality of this speech; all he said
was: “Then I suppose you are never going to see Mr. Harborough again?”
“No,” answered Bill, and as she did so Mr. Johnson, who had caught
the name, tried to draw his rector into a discussion of Sunday’s
enormities. But Mr. Dane would not be drawn; he was polite, but firm
and most uncommunicative. The only opinion he would give was that he
believed Mr. Harborough’s proceedings were not actionable, since he
himself had given consent for the mass to be finished.
“But I am sure we could prosecute,” Mr. Johnson persisted. “I was
speaking to Stevens,--Stevens of Wrugglesby you know--about it; he
says it is quite possible to prosecute for brawling and creating a
disturbance in church during divine service, if for nothing else.”
“No doubt he is right, but I do not think the churchwardens will wish
to prosecute. The case would offer several nice points to a lawyer,
for, though the mass was begun without our permission, and so was
technically a disturbance, the offence was partly condoned by the
permission to continue which was afterwards given. Moreover, though
our church is of course a church of England as by law established,
the Harborough chapel is held on a very old tenure which it would be
necessary to understand clearly before any move could be made in the
matter. I don’t mean to say we could not prosecute: I dare say we
could; but I hardly think it is necessary. What do you think?”
Mr. Johnson almost thought it was, on account of the precedent: “Solely
on account of the precedent; it might occur again.”
“I do not think it will,” Mr. Dane answered, just in time to prevent
Bill declaring the same thing warmly. Then someone began to sing and
they all listened, placidly or otherwise according to their natures.
When the song was over, Bill, finding Mr. Johnson’s attention diverted
elsewhere, turned to her neighbour for information on a subject which
had puzzled her since her first visit to Wood Hall.
“You know all about this part of the country,” she said. “Perhaps you
can tell me if it is true that a good many years ago a body was carried
by night from Corbycroft to the little church in Wood Hall park.”
“Yes, certainly it is true; but what makes you ask? Who has told you of
it?”
“Mr. Harborough, but he did not say much; is it a secret?”
“No, oh no; some of the old folks at Gurnett still tell the tale,
though there are not many now who can tell much except from hearsay.
It was not much talked about at the time, and is pretty well forgotten
now.”
He spoke as if the subject had long lost its interest for him, but to
Bill it was all fresh; she felt that her romance was becoming exciting
again. “Who was it?” she asked. “Who were they going to bury?”
“Roger Corby, the old Squire he was called, though he was not squire
of Gurnett. He died at Corbycroft, and he died very much in debt. His
servants and--and some other people believed that his body would,
according to a barbarous old practice, be arrested for debt, so they
removed it by night to the church in Wood Hall park.”
“And was it arrested?”
“No, and I do not believe there was any likelihood that it would have
been. Long ago bodies were sometimes arrested, legally or illegally,--I
do not know which--but so late as that--it was in 1833--it was more
than improbable.”
“But they must have believed it,” Bill objected; “they must have
thought it would happen.”
“Yes, but the servants were ignorant, and the girl, the Squire’s
granddaughter, was a child of thirteen, headstrong, daring,
imaginative; she heard the servants’ chatter and believed it. The thing
was practically her doing. She was fond of her grandfather, and there
was no one to take charge at his death; her father was abroad and she
and the old butler managed everything. She always did as she liked, and
grew up as she pleased, with no one to thwart her.”
Bill wondered if Mr. Dane had known the granddaughter, or if this too
was only part of the local tale; she would have liked to ask him but
thought that perhaps she ought not, as the last words scarcely seemed
addressed to her. She contented herself with inquiring, “Did you live
here then?”
“No,” he roused himself with an effort. “No; I was not born in this
part of the country and at that time I was a lad at school; a little
lad I must have been, for I am younger than Harborough.”
“And he? Did he know at the time? How old was he then?”
“Yes, he knew; he must have known, for he was at home when the thing
happened.”
There were more questions Bill wanted to ask, but she was not able to
do so for at that moment Miss Dawson’s well-trained soprano informed
the company that she was “a monkey on a stick.”
By the time she had reached the end of her song Mr. Perry had claimed
the rector’s attention, and Bill was left to meditate on the half-told
story until Mrs. Dawson asked her with awful politeness for a little
music. Theresa had warned her that this would occur, telling her to
bring her music in anticipation. Bill had obediently brought it,
making up her mind to play one of her pieces if required, but now when
the time came she did no such thing. She cast a quick glance at Miss
Dawson, who was now talking to Gilchrist Harborough, and thinking
of the covert sneer at Polly’s skirt, went to the piano in no very
Christian frame of mind. “I can sing as well as you,” was the defiance
she mentally hurled at the young lady as she sat down to the piano and
began to play from memory, or, more correctly speaking, by ear from
some half forgotten melody. It was curious music, at first compelling
attention by its strangeness, afterwards holding it by a charm of its
own,--a love-song of long ago, low, yet with an almost harsh refrain
in it, vibrating with a passion at first suppressed, but afterwards
breaking forth into a tumult of emotion likely to tingle strangely in
the nerves of those who listened.
“Red is the rose thou hast bound in thy hair,
Redder thy lips, love.
Soft is thy breath, aye, the sweetest of air,
Incense to me, love;
E’en though it choketh the voice of my prayer,
(I pray not now, love.)
Stars are thine eyes,--ill stars some declare,
Beacons to me, love.
Oh, heart of my heart, I want nought but thy beauty,
Of here and hereafter, I ask only thee!
Sinner or saint, thou art God of my worship,
In time and eternity Heaven to me!”
Silently Mr. Dane rose and went out of the room, closing the door
noiselessly after him. At the time Bill’s astonished audience hardly
noticed it; afterwards it was said by some of the more severe that he
went out to mark his disapproval of the tone and tenor of the song,
which was certainly most unbecoming in a young girl. This may have been
the case; it obviously was not because his Christian forbearance and
courtesy were tried beyond endurance, as sometimes happened, by false
notes, for to a musician the rendering of this song left little to
be desired. Whatever the reason, Mr. Dane left the drawing-room, and
passing through the hall went out by the open garden-door, out into the
sweet spring night where the song could not reach him. His lips moved
once as he went:
“If God in His anger hath shut thee from Heaven,
Then closed on us both let its golden gates be.”
And the strange thing was that these words did not occur in the first
part of the song which he had heard, but in the second part which he
did not hear, and of which Bill was now singing the last verses.
“Dark is the future, dark as despair,
Dark as thine eyes, love.
Cursed is our troth--for curse dost thou care?
Curse of the church, love?
Death and dishonour, e’en both we must dare,
Fearest with me, love?
Fearest to love me? Yet still thou’ll not tear
Thyself from my heart, love.
Now and henceforward, forever thou’rt there,
Nor can’st thou go, love.
Oh, soul of my soul, if damned is thy beauty,
Then damned be my spirit forever with thee!
If God in His anger hath shut thee from Heaven,
Then closed on us both let its golden gates be!
For thou, oh, beloved, art the God of my worship,
In time and eternity Heaven to me!”
And between the box-edged borders, where drooping daffodils glimmered
in the moonlight, an old man stood and murmured in the ghostly,
tearless upheaval of some dead passion:
“Thou, oh beloved, art the God of my worship,
In time and eternity Heaven to me!”