Mr. Incledon went and came; he did not accept his dismissal, nor,
indeed, had any dismissal been given to him. A young lover, like Edward
Wodehouse, would have been at once crushed and rendered furious by the
appeal Rose had made so ineffectually to the man of experience who knew
what he was about. If she was worth having at all, she was worth a
struggle; and Mr. Incledon, in the calm exercise of his judgment, knew
that at the last every good thing falls into the arms of the patient man
who can wait. He had not much difficulty in penetrating the thin veil
which she had cast over the “some one” for whom she cared, but who, so
far as she knew, did not care for her. It could be but one person, and
the elder lover was glad beyond description to know that his rival had
not spoken, and that he was absent and likely to be absent. Edward
Wodehouse being thus disposed of, there was no one else in Mr.
Incledon’s way, and with but a little patience he was sure to win.
As for Rose, though she felt that her appeal had been unsuccessful, she
too was less discouraged by it than she could have herself supposed. In
the first place she was let alone; nothing was pressed upon her; she had
time allowed her to calm down, and with time everything was possible.
Some miracle would happen to save her; or, if not a miracle, some
ordinary turn of affairs would take the shape of miracle, and answer the
same purpose. What is Providence, but a divine agency to get us out of
trouble, to restore happiness, to make things pleasant for us? so, at
least, one thinks when one is young; older, we begin to learn that
Providence has to watch over many whose interests are counter to ours as
well as our own; but at twenty, all that is good and necessary in life
seems always on our side, and there seems no choice for Heaven but to
clear the obstacles out of our way. Something would happen, and all
would be well again; and Rose’s benevolent fancy even exercised itself
in finding for “poor Mr. Incledon” some one who would suit him better
than herself. He was very wary, very judicious, in his treatment of her.
He ignored that one scene when he had refused to give up his proposal,
and conducted himself for some time as if he had sincerely given up his
proposal, and was no more than the family friend, the most kind and
sympathizing of neighbors. It was only by the slowest degrees that Rose
found out that he had given up nothing, that his constant visits and
constant attentions were so many meshes of the net in which her simple
feet were being caught. For the first few weeks, as I have said, she was
relieved altogether from everything that looked like persecution. She
heard of him, indeed, constantly, but only in the pleasantest way. Fresh
flowers came, filling the dim old rooms with brightness; and the
gardener from Whitton came to look after the flowers and to suggest to
Mrs. Damerel improvements in her garden, and how to turn the hall, which
was large in proportion to the house, into a kind of conservatory; and
baskets of fruit came, over which the children rejoiced; and Mr.
Incledon himself came, and talked to Mrs. Damerel and played with them,
and left books, new books, all fragrant from the printing, of which he
sometimes asked Rose’s opinion casually. None of all these good things
was for her, and yet she had the unexpressed consciousness, which was
pleasant enough so long as no one else remarked it and no recompense was
asked, that but for her those pleasant additions to the family life
would not have been. Then it was extraordinary how often he would meet
them by accident in their walks, and how much trouble he would take to
adapt his conversation to theirs, finding out (but this Rose did not
discover till long after) all her tastes and likings. I suppose that
having once made up his mind to take so much trouble, the pursuit of
this shy creature, who would only betray what was in her by intervals,
who shut herself up like the mimosa whenever she was too boldly touched,
but who opened secretly with an almost childlike confidence when her
fears were lulled to rest, became more interesting to Mr. Incledon than
a more ordinary wooing, with a straightforward “yes” to his proposal at
the end of it, would have been. His vanity got many wounds both by
Rose’s unconsciousness and by her shrinking; but he pursued his plan
undaunted by either, having made up his mind to win her and no other;
and the more difficult the fight was, the more triumphant would be the
success.
This state of affairs lasted for some time; indeed, everything went on
quietly, with no apparent break in the gentle monotony of existence at
the White House, until the spring was so far advanced as to have pranked
itself out in a flood of primroses. It was something quite insignificant
and incidental which for the first time reawakened Rose’s fears. He had
looked at her with something in his eyes which betrayed him, or some
word had dropped from his lips which startled her; but the first direct
attack upon her peace of mind did not come from Mr. Incledon. It came
from two ladies on the Green, one of whom at least was very innocent of
evil meaning. Rose was walking with her mother on an April afternoon,
when they met Mrs. Wodehouse and Mrs. Musgrove, likewise taking their
afternoon walk. Mrs. Musgrove was a very quiet person, who interfered
with nobody, yet who was mixed up with everything that went on on the
Green, by right of being the most sympathetic of souls, ready to hear
everybody’s grievance and to help in everybody’s trouble. Mrs. Wodehouse
struck straight across the Green to meet Mrs. Damerel and Rose, when she
saw them, so that it was by no ordinary chance meeting, but an encounter
sought eagerly on one side at least, that this revelation came. Mrs.
Wodehouse was full of her subject, vibrating, with it to the very
flowers on her bonnet, which thrilled and nodded against the blue
distance like a soldier’s plumes. She came forward with a forced
exuberance of cordiality, holding out both her hands.
“Now tell me!” she said; “may we congratulate you? Is the embargo
removed? Quantities of people have assured me that we need not hold our
tongues any longer, but that it is all settled at last.”
“What is all settled at last?” asked Mrs. Damerel, with sudden stiffness
and coldness. “I beg your pardon, but I really don’t in the least know
what you mean.”
“I said I was afraid you were too hasty,” said Mrs. Musgrove.
“Well, if one can’t believe the evidence of one’s senses, what is one to
believe?” cried Mrs. Wodehouse. “It is not kind, Rose, to keep all your
old friends so long in suspense. Of course, it is very easy to see on
which side the hesitation is; and I am sure I am very sorry if I have
been premature.”
“You are more than premature,” said Mrs. Damerel with a little laugh,
and an uneasy color on her cheek, “for you are speaking a language
neither Rose nor I understand. I hope, Mrs. Wodehouse, you have good
news from your son.”
“Oh, very good news indeed!” said the mother, whose indignation on her
son’s behalf made the rose on her bonnet quiver: and then there were a
few further interchanges, of volleys in the shape of questions and
answers of the most civil description, and the ladies shook hands and
parted. Rose had been struck dumb altogether by the dialogue, in which,
trembling and speechless, she had taken no part. When they had gone on
for a few yards in silence, she broke down in her effort at
self-restraint.
“Mamma, what does she mean?”
“Oh, Rose, do not drive me wild with your folly!” said Mrs. Damerel.
“What could she mean but one thing? If you think for one moment, you
will have no difficulty in understanding what she means.”
Rose woke up, as a sick man wakes after a narcotic, feverish and
trembling. “I thought,” she said, slowly, her heart beginning to throb,
and her head to ache in a moment--“I thought it was all given up.”
“How could you think anything so foolish? What symptom can you see of
its having been given up? Has he ceased coming? Has he ceased trying to
please you, ungrateful girl that you are? Indeed you go too far for
ordinary patience; for it cannot be stupidity--you are not stupid,” said
Mrs. Damerel, excitedly; “you have not even that excuse.”
“Oh, mamma, do not be angry!” said poor Rose; “I thought--it seemed so
natural that, as he saw more of me, he would give it up. Why should he
care for me? I am not like him, nor fit to be a great lady; he must see
that.”
“This is false humility, and it is very ill timed,” said Mrs. Damerel.
“Strange though it may seem, seeing more of you does not make him give
it up; and if you are too simple or too foolish to see how much he is
devoted to you, no one else is. Mrs. Wodehouse had a spiteful meaning,
but she is not the first who has spoken to me. All our friends on the
Green believe, like her, that everything is settled between you; that it
is only some hesitation about--about our recent sorrow which keeps it
from being announced.”
Rose turned upon her mother for the first time with reproach in her
eyes. “You should have told me!” she said, with momentary passion; “you
ought to have told me,--for how was I to know?”
“Rose, I will not allow such questions; you are not a fool nor a child.
Did you think Mr. Incledon came for me? or Agatha, perhaps? He told you
he would not give you up. You were warned what his object was--more than
warned. Was I to defeat my own wishes by keeping you constantly on your
guard? You knew what he wanted, and you have encouraged him and accepted
his attentions.”
“I--encouraged him?”
“Whenever a girl permits, she encourages,” said Mrs. Damerel, with
oracular solemnity. “In matters of this kind, Rose, if you do not refuse
at once, you commit yourself, and sooner or later you must accept.”
“You never told me so before. Oh, mamma! how was I to know? you never
said this to me before.”
“There are things that one knows by intuition,” said Mrs. Damerel; “and,
Rose, you know what my opinion has been all along. You have no right to
refuse. On the one side, there is everything that heart can desire; on
the other, nothing but a foolish, childish disinclination. I don’t know
if it goes so far as disinclination; you seem now to like him well
enough.”
“Do you not know the difference?” said Rose, turning wistful eyes upon
her mother. “Oh, mamma, you who ought to know so much better than I do!
I _like_ him very well--what does that matter?”
“It matters everything; liking is the first step to love. You can have
no reason, absolutely no reason, for refusing him if you like him. Rose,
oh, how foolish this is, and what a small, what a very small place there
seems to be in your mind for the thought of duty! You tell us you are
ready to die for us--which is absurd--and yet you cannot make up your
mind to this!”
“It is different,” said Rose; “oh, it is different! Mamma, listen a
moment; you are a great deal better than I am; you love us better than
we love each other; you are never tired of doing things for us; whether
you are well or whether you are ill it does not matter; you are always
ready when the children want you. I am not blind,” said the girl, with
tears. “I know all you do and all you put up with; but, mamma, you who
are good, you who know how to deny yourself, would _you_ do this?”
“Rose!”
“Would you do it?” cried Rose, excited and breathless, pursuing her
advantage.
Mrs. Damerel was not old, nor was life quenched in her either by her
years or her sorrows. Her face flushed, under her heavy widow’s veil,
all over, with a violent overwhelming blush like a girl’s.
“Rose,” she said, passionately, “how dare you--how dare you put such a
question to your mother? I do it!--either you are heartless altogether,
or you are mad, and don’t know what you say.”
“Forgive, me mamma; but, oh, let me speak! There is nothing else so
hard, nothing so disagreeable, but you would do it for us; but you would
not do this. There is a difference, then? you do not deny it now?”
“You use a cruel argument,” said Mrs. Damerel, the blush still warm upon
her matron cheek, “and it is not a true one. I am your father’s wife. I
am your mother and Bertie’s, who are almost man and woman. All my life
would be reversed, all my relations confused, if I were to make such a
sacrifice; besides, it is impossible,” she said, suddenly; “I did not
think that a child of mine would ever have so insulted me.”
“I do not mean it for insult, mamma. Oh, forgive me! I want you only to
see the difference. It is not like anything else. You would do anything
else, and so would I; but, oh, not this! You see it yourself--not this,
mamma.”
“It is foolish to attempt to argue with you,” said Mrs. Damerel; and she
hurried in, and up-stairs to her room, leaving Rose, not less excited,
to follow. Rose had scarcely calculated upon the prodigious force of her
own argument. She was half frightened by it, and half ashamed of having
used it, yet to some extent triumphant in her success. There was quite a
bank of flowers in the hall as she passed through--flowers which she
stopped to look at and caress, with little touches of fondness as
flower-lovers use, before she recollected that they were Mr. Incledon’s
flowers. She took up a book which was on the hall table, and hurried on
to avoid that contemplation, and then she remembered that it was Mr.
Incledon’s book. She was just entering the drawing-room as she did so,
and threw it down pettishly on a chair by the door; and, lo! Mr.
Incledon himself rose, a tall shadow against the window, where he had
been waiting for the ladies’ return.
“Mamma has gone up-stairs; I will call her,” said Rose, with confusion,
turning away.
“Nay, never mind; it is a pity to disturb Mrs. Damerel, and it is long,
very long, since you have allowed me a chance of talking to you.”
“Indeed, we see each other very often,” said Rose, falteringly.
“Yes, I see you in a crowd, protected by the children, or with your
mother, who is my friend, but who cannot help me--I wanted to ask about
the book you threw down so impatiently as you came in. Don’t you like
it?” said Mr. Incledon, with a smile.
What a relief it was! She was so grateful to him for not making love to
her, that I almost think she would have consented to marry him, had he
asked her, before he left that evening. But he was very cautious and
very wise, and, though he had come with no other intention, he was
warned by the excitement in her looks, and stopped the very words on her
lips, for which Rose, short-sighted, like all mortals, was very thankful
to him, not knowing how much the distinct refusal, which it was in her
heart to give, would have simplified all their affairs.
This, however, was at once the first and the last of Rose’s successes.
When she saw traces of tears about her mother’s eyes, and how pale she
was, her heart smote her, and she made abject submission of herself, and
poured out her very soul in excuses, so that Mrs. Damerel, though
vanquished for the moment, took higher ground after it. The mother,
indeed, was so much shaken by the practical application of her
doctrines, that she felt there was no longer time for the gradual
undermining which was Mr. Incledon’s policy. Mrs. Damerel did not know
what reply she could make if Rose repeated her novel and strenuous
argument, and felt that now safety lay in as rapid a conclusion of the
matter as possible; so that from this moment every day saw the closing
of the net over poor Rose. The lover became more close in his
attendance, the mother more urgent in her appeals; but so cleverly did
he manage the matter that his society was always a relief to the girl
when hard driven, and she gradually got to feel herself safer with him,
which was a great deal in his favor. Everything, however, went against
Rose. The ladies on the Green made gentle criticisms upon her, and
called her a sly little puss. Some hoped she would not forget her humble
friends when she came into her kingdom; some asked her what she meant by
dragging her captive so long at her chariot wheels; and the captive
himself, though a miracle of goodness, would cast pathetic looks at her,
and make little speeches full of meaning. Rose began to feel herself
like a creature at bay; wherever she turned she could see no way of
escape; even sharp-eyed Agatha, in the wisdom of fifteen, turned against
her.
“Why don’t you marry Mr. Incledon, and have done with it?” said Agatha.
“I would, if I were you. What a good thing it would be for you! and I
suppose he would be kind to the rest of us, too. Why, you would have
your carriage--two or three carriages, and a horse to ride, and you
might go abroad if you liked, or do anything you liked. How I should
like to have quantities of money, and a beautiful house, and everything
in the world I wanted! I should not shilly-shally like you.”
“No one has everything in the world they want,” said Rose, solemnly,
thinking also, if Mr. Incledon had been “some one else” how much easier
her decision would have been.
“You seem to think they do,” said Agatha, “or you would not make such a
fuss about Mr. Incledon. Why, what do you object to? I suppose it’s
because he is not young enough. I think he is a very nice man, and very
good-looking. I only wish he had asked me.”
“Agatha, you are too young to talk of such things,” said Rose, with the
dignity of her seniority.
“Then I wish my eldest sister was too young to put them into my head,”
said Agatha.
This conversation drove Rose from her last place of safety, the
school-room, where hitherto she had been left in quiet. A kind of
despair seized her. She dared not encounter her mother in the
drawing-room, where probably Mr. Incledon also would appear towards the
twilight. She put on her hat and wandered out, her heart full of a
subdued anguish, poignant yet not unsweet, for the sense of intense
suffering is in its way a kind of excitement and painful enjoyment to
the very young. It was a spring afternoon, soft and sweet, full of
promise of the summer, and Rose, quite unused to walking or indeed doing
anything else alone, found a certain pleasure in the loneliness and
silence. How tranquillizing it was to be alone; to have no one near who
would say anything to disturb her; nobody with reproachful eyes; nothing
around or about but the soft sky, the trees growing green, the grass
which waved its thin blades in the soft air! It seemed to Rose that she
was out for a long time, and that the silence refreshed her, and made
her strong for her fate whatever it might be. Before she returned home
she went in at the old familiar gate of the rectory, and skirted the
lawn by a by-path she knew well, and stole down the slope to the little
platform under the old May-tree. By this time it had begun to get dark;
and as Rose looked across the soft undulations of the half visible
country, every line of which was dear and well known to her, her eyes
fell suddenly upon a gleam of light from among the trees. What friendly
sprite had lighted the lights so early in the parlor of the cottage at
Ankermead, I cannot tell, but they glimmered out from the brown clump of
trees and took Rose so by surprise that her eyes filled with sudden
moisture, and her heart beat with a muffled throbbing in her ears. So
well she recollected the warm summer evening long ago (and yet it was
not a year ago), and every word that was said. “Imagination will play me
many a prank before I forget this night!” Did he mean that? had he
forgotten it? or was he perhaps leaning over the ship’s side somewhere
while the big vessel rustled through the soft broad sea, thinking of
home, as he had said, seeing the lights upon the coast, and dreaming of
his mother’s lighted windows, and of that dim, dreamy, hazy landscape,
so soft and far inland, with the cottage lamp shining out from that
brown clump of trees? The tears fell softly from Rose’s eyes through the
evening dimness which hid them almost from herself; she was very sad,
heart-broken--and yet not so miserable as she thought. She did not know
how long she sat there, looking at the cottage lights through her tears.
The new rector and his wife sat down to dinner all unaware of the
forlorn young visitor who had stolen into the domain which was now
theirs, and Rose’s mother began to get sadly uneasy about her absence,
with a chill dread lest she should have pressed her too far and driven
her to some scheme of desperation. Mr. Incledon came out to look for
her, and met her just outside the rectory gate, and was very kind to
her, making her take his arm and leading her gently home without asking
a question.
“She has been calling at the rectory, and I fear it was too much for
her,” he said; an explanation which made the quick tears start to Mrs.
Damerel’s own eyes, who kissed her daughter and sent her up-stairs
without further question. I almost think Mr. Incledon was clever enough
to guess the true state of affairs; but he told this fib with an
admirable air of believing it, and made Rose grateful to the very bottom
of her heart.
Gratitude is a fine sentiment to cultivate in such circumstances. It is
a better and safer beginning than that pity which is said to be akin to
love. Rose struggled no more after this. She surrendered quietly, made
no further resistance, and finally yielded a submissive assent to what
was asked of her. She became “engaged” to Mr. Incledon, and the
engagement was formally announced, and all the Green joined in with
congratulations, except, indeed, Mrs. Wodehouse, who called in a marked
manner just after the ladies had been seen to go out, and left a huge
card, which was all her contribution to the felicitations of the
neighborhood. There was scarcely a lady in the parish except this one
who did not take the trouble to walk or drive to the White House and
kiss Rose and congratulate her mother. “Such a very excellent
match--everything that a mother could desire!” they said. “But you must
get a little more color in your cheeks, my dear,” said old Lady Denvil.
“This is not like the dear rector’s Rose in June. It is more like a pale
China rose in November.” What could Rose do but cry at this allusion? It
was kind of the old lady (who was always kind), to give her this
excellent reason and excuse for the tears in her eyes.
And then there came, with a strange, hollow, far-off sound, proposals of
dates and days to be fixed, and talk about the wedding dresses and the
wedding tour. She listened to it all with an inward shiver; but,
fortunately for Rose, Mrs. Damerel would hear of no wedding until after
the anniversary of her husband’s death, which had taken place in July.
The Green discussed the subject largely, and most people blamed her for
standing on this punctilio; for society in general, with a wise sense of
the uncertainty of all human affairs, has a prejudice against the
postponement of marriages which it never believes in thoroughly till
they have taken place. They thought it ridiculous in a woman of Mrs.
Damerel’s sense, and one, too, who ought to know how many slips there
are between the cup and the lip; but Mr. Incledon did not seem to
object, and, of course, everybody said no one else had a right to
interfere.
All this took place in April, when the Damerels had been but three
months in their new house. Even that little time had proved bitterly to
them many of the evils of their impoverished condition, for already Mr.
Hunsdon had begun to write of the long time Bertie had been at school,
and the necessity there was that he should exert himself; and even
Reginald’s godfather, who had always been so good, showed signs of a
disposition to launch his charge, too, on the world, suggesting that
perhaps it might be better, as he had now no prospect of anything but
working for himself, that he should leave Eton. Mrs. Damerel kept these
humiliations to herself, but it was only natural that they should give
fire to her words in her arguments with Rose; and it could not be denied
that the family had spent more than their income permitted in the first
three months. There had been the mourning, and the removal, and so many
other expenses, to begin with. It is hard enough to struggle with bills
as Mrs. Damerel had done in her husband’s lifetime, when by means of the
wisest art and never-failing attention it was always possible to pay
them as they became urgent; but when there is no money at all, either
present or in prospect, what is a poor woman to do? They made her sick
many a time when she opened the drawer in her desk and looked at them.
Even with all she could accept from Mr. Incledon (and that was limited
by pride and delicacy in many ways), and with one less to provide for,
Mrs. Damerel would still have care sufficient to make her cup run over.
Rose’s good fortune did not take her burden away.
Thus things went on through the early summer. The thought of Rose’s
trousseau nearly broke her mother’s heart. It must be to some degree in
consonance with her future position, and it must not come from Mr.
Incledon; and where was it to come from? Mrs. Damerel had begun to write
a letter to her brother, appealing, which it was a bitter thing to do,
for his help, one evening early in May. She had written after all her
children had left her, when she was alone in the old-fashioned house,
where all the old walls and the old stairs uttered strange creaks and
jars in the midnight stillness, and the branches of the creepers tapped
ghostly taps against the window. Her nerves were over-strained, and her
heart was sore, notwithstanding her success in the one matter which she
had struggled for so earnestly; and after writing half her letter Mrs.
Damerel had given it up, with a strange feeling that something opposed
the writing of it, some influence which she could not define, which
seemed to stop her words, and made her incapable of framing a sentence.
She gave it up with almost a superstitious thrill of feeling, and a
nervous tremor which she tried in vain to master; and, leaving it
half-written in her blotting-book, stole up-stairs to bed in the
silence, as glad to get out of the echoing, creaking room as if it had
[Illustration: BEFORE ROSE WAS AWAKE MRS. DAMEREL CAME INTO HER ROOM.]
been haunted. Rose heard her come up-stairs, and thought with a little
bitterness as she lay awake, her pillow wet with the tears which she
never shed in the daylight, of her mother’s triumph over her, and how
all this revolution was her work. She heard something like a sigh as her
mother passed her door, and wondered almost contemptuously what she
could have to sigh about, for Rose felt all the other burdens in the
world to be as nothing in comparison with her burden; as, indeed we all
do.
Next morning, however, before Rose was awake, Mrs. Damerel came into her
room in her dressing-gown, with her hair, which was still so pretty,
curling about her shoulders, and her face lit up with a wonderful pale
illumination like a northern sky.
“What is it?” cried Rose, springing up from her bed.
“Rose,” said Mrs. Damerel, gasping for breath, “we are rich again! No!
it is impossible--but it is true; here it is in this letter--my uncle
Ernest is dead, and he has left us all his money. We are richer than
ever I was in all my life.”
Rose got up, and ran and kissed her mother, and cried, with a great cry
that rang all over the house, “Then I am free!”