Edward Wodehouse reached Dinglefield about eleven o’clock, coming back
from that strange visit to town. He felt it necessary to go to the White
House before even he went to his mother, but he was so cowardly as to go
round a long way so as to avoid crossing the Green, or exhibiting
himself to public gaze. He felt that his mother would never forgive him
did she know that he had gone anywhere else before going to her, and,
indeed, I think Mrs. Wodehouse’s feeling was very natural. He put his
hat well over his eyes, but he did not, as may be supposed, escape
recognition--and went on with a conviction that the news of his arrival
would reach his mother before he did, and that he would have something
far from delightful to meet with when he went home.
As for Mrs. Damerel, when she woke up in the morning to the fact that
Rose was gone, her first feelings, I think, were more those of anger
than of alarm. She was not afraid that her daughter had committed
suicide, or run away permanently; for she was very reasonable, and her
mind fixed upon the probabilities of a situation rather than on the
violent catastrophes which might be possible. It was Agatha who first
brought her the news, open-mouthed, and shouting the information, “Oh,
mamma, come here, come here, Rose has run away!” so that every one in
the house could hear.
“Nonsense, child! she has gone--to do something for me,” said the mother
on the spur of the moment, prompt to save exposure even at the instant
when she received the shock.
“But, mamma,” cried Agatha, “her bed has not been slept in, her things
are gone--her”--
Here Mrs. Damerel put her hand over the girl’s mouth, and with a look
she never forgot went with her into the empty nest, from which the bird
had flown. All Mrs. Damerel’s wits rallied to her on the moment to save
the scandal which was inevitable if this were known. “Shut the door,”
she said in a low quiet voice. “Rose is very foolish: because she thinks
she has quarrelled with me, to make such a show of her undutifulness!
She has gone up to town by the early train.”
“Then you knew!” cried Agatha, with eyes as wide open as just now her
mouth had been.
“Do you think it likely she would go without my knowing?” said her
mother; an unanswerable question, for which Agatha, though her reason
discovered the imposture, could find no ready response. She looked on
with wonder while her mother, with her own hands, tossed the coverings
off the little white bed, and gave it the air of having been slept in.
It was Agatha’s first lesson in the art of making things appear as they
are not.
“Rose has been foolish; but I don’t choose that Mary Jane should make a
talk about it, and tell everybody that she did not go to bed last night
like a Christian--and do you hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Damerel.
Agatha followed her mother’s directions with awe, and was subdued all
day by a sense of the mystery; for why, if mamma knew all about it, and
it was quite an ordinary proceeding, should Rose have gone to town by
the early train?
Mrs. Damerel, however, had no easy task to get calmly through the
breakfast, and arrange her household matters for the day, with this
question perpetually recurring to her, with sharp thrills and shoots of
pain--Where was Rose? She had been angry at first, deeply annoyed and
vexed, but now other feelings struck in. An anxiety, which did not
suggest any definite danger, but was dully and persistently present in
her mind, like something hanging over her, took possession of her whole
being. Where had she gone? What could she be doing at that moment? What
steps could her mother take to find out, without exposing her
foolishness to public gaze? How should she satisfy Mr. Incledon? how
conceal this strange disappearance from her neighbors? They all took
what people are pleased to call “a deep interest” in Rose, and, indeed,
in all the late rector’s family; and Mrs. Damerel knew the world well
enough to be aware that the things which one wishes to be kept secret,
are just those which everybody manages to hear. She forgot even to be
angry with Rose in the deep necessity of concealing the extraordinary
step she had taken; a step enough to lay a young girl under an enduring
stigma all her life; and what could she do to find her without betraying
her? She could not even make an inquiry without risking this betrayal.
She could not ask a passenger on the road, or a porter at the station,
if they had seen her, lest she should thereby make it known that Rose’s
departure had been clandestine. All through the early morning, while she
was busy with the children and the affairs of the house, this problem
was working in her mind. Of all things this was the most important, not
to compromise Rose, or to let any one know what a cruel and unkind step
she had taken. Mrs. Damerel knew well how such a stigma clings to a
girl, and how ready the world is to impute other motives than the real
one. Perhaps she had been hard upon the child, and pressed a hateful
sacrifice upon her unduly, but now Rose’s credit was the first thing she
thought of. She would not even attempt to get relief to her own anxiety
at the cost of any animadversion upon Rose; or suffer anybody to suspect
her daughter in order to ease herself. This necessity made her position
doubly difficult and painful, for, without compromising Rose, she did
not know how to inquire into her disappearance or what to do; and, as
the moments passed over with this perpetual undercurrent going on in her
mind, the sense of painful anxiety grew stronger and stronger. Where
could she have gone? She had left no note, no letter behind her, as
runaways are generally supposed to do. She had, her mother knew, only a
few shillings in her purse; she had no relations at hand with whom she
could find refuge. Where had she gone? Every minute this question
pressed more heavily upon her, and sounded louder and louder. Could she
go on shutting it up in her mind, taking counsel of no one? Mrs. Damerel
felt this to be impossible, and after breakfast sent a telegram to Mr.
Nolan, begging him to come to her “on urgent business.” She felt sure
that Rose had confided some of her troubles at least to him; and he was
a friend upon whose help and secrecy she could fully rely.
Her mind was in this state of intense inward perturbation and outward
calm, when, standing at her bedroom window, which commanded the road and
a corner of the Green, upon which the road opened, she saw Edward
Wodehouse coming towards the house. I suppose there was never any one
yet in great anxiety and suspense, who did not go to the window with
some sort of forlorn hope of seeing something to relieve them. She
recognized the young man at once, though she did not know of his
arrival, or even that he was looked for; and the moment she saw him
instantly gave him a place--though she could not tell what place--in the
maze of her thoughts. Her heart leaped up at sight of him, though he
might be but walking past, he might be but coming to pay an ordinary
call on his return, for anything she knew. Instinctively, her heart
associated him with her child. She watched him come in through the
little shrubbery, scarcely knowing where she stood, so intense was her
suspense; then went down to meet him, looking calm and cold, as if no
anxiety had ever clouded her firmament. “How do you do, Mr. Wodehouse? I
did not know you had come back,” she said, with perfect composure, as if
he had been the most every-day acquaintance, and she had parted from him
last night.
He looked at her with a countenance much paler and more agitated than
her own, and, with that uneasy air of deprecation natural to a man who
has a confession to make. “No one did; or, indeed, does,” he said, “not
even my mother. I got my promotion quite suddenly, and insisted upon a
few days’ leave to see my friends before I joined my ship.”
“I congratulate you,” said Mrs. Damerel, putting heroic force upon
herself. “I suppose, then, I should have said Captain Wodehouse? How
pleased your mother will be!”
“Yes,” he said, abstractedly. “I should not, as you may suppose, have
taken the liberty to come here so early merely to tell you a piece of
news concerning myself. I came up from Portsmouth during the night, and
when the train stopped at this station--by accident--Miss Damerel got
into the same carriage in which I was. She charged me with this note to
give to you.”
There was a sensation in Mrs. Damerel’s ears as if some sluice had given
way in the secrecy of her heart, and the blood was surging and swelling
upwards. But she managed to smile a ghastly smile at him, and to take
the note without further display of her feelings. It was a little
twisted note written in pencil, which Wodehouse, indeed, had with much
trouble persuaded Rose to write. Her mother opened it with fingers
trembling so much that the undoing of the scrap of paper was a positive
labor to her. She dropped softly into a chair, however, with a great and
instantaneous sense of relief, the moment she had read these few
pencilled words:--
“Mamma, I have gone to Miss Margetts’. I am very wretched, and don’t
know what to do. I could not stay at home any longer. Do not be angry. I
think my heart will break.”
Mrs. Damerel did not notice these pathetic words. She saw “Miss
Margetts,” and that was enough for her. Her blood resumed its usual
current, her heart began to beat less violently. She felt, as she leant
back in her chair, exhausted and weak with the agitation of the morning;
weak as one only feels when the immediate pressure is over. Miss
Margetts was the school-mistress with whom Rose had received her
education. No harm to Rose, nor her reputation, could come did all the
world know she was there. She was so much and instantaneously relieved,
that her watchfulness over herself intermitted, and she did not speak
for a minute or two. She roused herself up with a little start when she
caught Wodehouse’s eye gravely fixed upon her.
“Thanks,” she said; “I am glad to have this little note, telling me of
Rose’s safe arrival with her friends in London. It was very good of you
to bring it. I do not know what put it into the child’s head to go by
that early train.”
“Whatever it was, it was very fortunate for me,” said Edward. “As we had
met by such a strange chance I took the liberty of seeing her safe to
Miss Margetts’ house.”
“You are very good,” said Mrs. Damerel; “I am much obliged to you;” and
then the two were silent for a moment, eying each other like wrestlers
before they close.
“Mrs. Damerel,” said young Wodehouse, faltering, and brave sailor as he
was, feeling more frightened than he could have said, “there is
something more which I ought to tell you. Meeting her so suddenly, and
remembering how I had been balked in seeing her before I left
Dinglefield, I was overcome by my feelings, and ventured to tell Miss
Damerel”--
“Mr. Wodehouse, my daughter is engaged to be married!” cried Mrs.
Damerel, with sharp and sudden alarm.
“But not altogether--with her own will,” he said.
“You must be mistaken,” said the mother, with a gasp for breath. “Rose
is foolish, and changes with every wind that blows. She cannot have
intended to leave any such impression on your mind. It is the result, I
suppose of some lovers’ quarrel. As this is the case, I need not say
that though under any circumstances, I should deeply have felt the honor
you do her yet, in the present, the only thing I can do is to say good
morning and many thanks. Have you really not seen your mother yet?”
“Not yet. I am going”--
“Oh go, please, go!” said Mrs. Damerel. “It was extremely kind of you to
bring the note before going home, but your mother would never forgive me
if I detained you; good-by. If you are here for a few days I may hope to
see you before you go.”
With these words she accompanied him to the door, smiling cordially as
she dismissed him. He could neither protest against the dismissal nor
linger in spite of it, to repeat the love-tale which she had stopped on
his lips. Her apparent calm had almost deceived him, and but for a
little quiver of her shadow upon the wall, a little clasping together of
her hands, with Rose’s letter in them, which nothing but the keenest
observation could have detected, he could almost have believed in his
bewilderment that Rose had been dreaming, and that her mother was quite
cognizant of her flight, and knew where she was going and all about it.
But, however that might be, he had to go, in a very painful maze of
thought, not knowing what to think or to hope about Rose, and having a
whimsical certainty of what must be awaiting him at home, had his mother
heard, as was most likely, of his arrival, and that he had gone first to
the White House. Fortunately for him, Mrs. Wodehouse had not heard it;
but she poured into his reluctant ears the whole story of Mr. Incledon
and the engagement, and of all the wonders with which he was filling
Whitton in preparation for his bride.
“Though I think she treated you very badly, after encouraging you as she
did, and leading you on to the very edge of a proposal--yet one can’t
but feel that she is a very lucky girl,” said Mrs. Wodehouse. “I hope
you will take care not to throw yourself in their way, my dear; though,
perhaps, on the whole, it would be best to show that you have got over
it entirely and don’t mind who she marries. A little insignificant chit
of a girl not worth your notice. There are as good fish in the sea,
Edward--or better, for that matter.”
“Perhaps you are right, mother,” he said, glad to escape from the
subject; and then he told her the mystery of his sudden promotion, and
how he had struggled to get this fortnight’s leave before joining his
ship, which was in commission for China. Mrs. Wodehouse fatigued her
brain with efforts to discover who it could be who had thus mysteriously
befriended her boy; and as this subject drew her mind from the other,
Edward was thankful enough to listen to her suggestions of this man who
was dead, and that man who was at the end of the world. He had not an
idea himself who it could be, and, I think, cherished a furtive hope
that it was his good service which had attracted the notice of my lords;
for young men are easily subject to this kind of illusion. But his mind,
it maybe supposed, was sufficiently disturbed without any question of
the kind. He had to reconcile Rose’s evident misery in her flight, with
her mother’s calm acceptance of it as a thing she knew of; and to draw a
painful balance between Mrs. Damerel’s power to insist and command, and
Rose’s power of resistance; finally, he had the despairing consciousness
that his leave was only for a fortnight, a period too short for anything
to be decided on. No hurried settlement of the extraordinary imbroglio
of affairs which he perceived dimly--no license, however special, would
make it possible to secure Rose in a fortnight’s time; and he was bound
to China for three years! This reflection, you may well suppose, gave
the young man enough to think of, and made his first day at home
anything but the ecstatic holiday which a first day at home ought to be.
As for Mrs. Damerel, when she went into her own house, after seeing this
dangerous intruder to the door, the sense of relief which had been her
only conscious feeling up to this moment gave place to the irritation
and repressed wrath which, I think, was very natural. She said to
herself, bitterly, that as the father had been so the daughter was. They
consulted their own happiness, their own feelings, and left her to make
everything straight behind them. What did it matter what she felt? What
was the good of her but to bear the burden of their self-indulgence?--to
make up for the wrongs they did, and conceal the scandal? I am aware
that in such a case, as in almost all others, the general sympathy goes
with the young; but yet I think poor Mrs. Damerel had much justification
for the bitterness in her heart. She wept a few hot tears by herself
which nobody even knew of or suspected, and then she returned to the
children’s lessons and her daily business, her head swimming a little,
and with a weakness born of past agitation, but subdued into a composure
not feigned but real. For after all, everything can be remedied except
exposure, she thought to herself; and going to Miss Margetts’ showed at
least a glimmering of common-sense on the part of the runaway, and
saved all public discussion of the “difficulty” between Rose and her
mother. Mrs. Damerel was a clergyman’s wife--nay, one might say a
clergywoman in her own person, accustomed to all the special decorums
and exactitudes which those who take the duties of the caste to heart
consider incumbent upon that section of humanity; but she set about
inventing a series of fibs on the spot with an ease which I fear long
practice and custom had given. How many fibs had she been compelled to
tell on her husband’s behalf?--exquisite little romances about his
health and his close study, and the mental occupations which kept him
from little necessary duties; although she knew perfectly well that his
study was mere desultory reading, and his delicate health,
self-indulgence. She had shielded him so with that delicate network of
falsehood that the rector had gone out of the world with the highest
reputation. _She_ had all her life been subject to remark as rather a
commonplace wife for such a man, but no one had dreamt of criticising
him. Now she had the same thing to begin over again; and she carried her
system to such perfection that she began upon her own family, as indeed
in her husband’s case she had always done, imbuing the children with a
belief in his abstruse studies and sensitive organization, as well as
the outer world.
“Rose has gone to pay Miss Margetts a visit,” she said, at the early
dinner. “I think a little change will do her good. I shall run up to
town in a few days and see after her things.”
“Gone to Miss Margetts’! I wonder why no one ever said so,” cried
Agatha, who was always full of curiosity. “What a funny thing, to go off
on a visit without even saying a word!”
“It was settled quite suddenly,” said the mother, with perfect
composure. “I don’t think she has been looking well for some days; and I
always intended to go to town about her things.”
“What a very funny thing,” repeated Agatha, “to go off at five o’clock;
never to say a word to any one--not even to take a box with her clothes,
only that little black bag. I never heard of anything so funny; and to
be so excited about it that she never went to bed.”
“Do not talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Damerel, sharply; “it was not decided
till the evening before, after you were all asleep.”
“But, mamma”--
“I think you might take some of this pudding down to poor Mary Simpson,”
said Mrs. Damerel, calmly; “she has no appetite, poor girl; and, Agatha,
you can call at the postoffice, and ask Mrs. Brown if her niece has got
a place yet. I think she might suit me as housemaid, if she has not got
a place.”
“Then, thank Heaven,” said Agatha, diverted entirely into a new channel,
“we shall get rid of Mary Jane!”
Having thus, as it were, made her experiment upon the subject nearest
her heart, Mrs. Damerel had her little romance perfectly ready for Mr.
Incledon when he came. “You must not blame me for a little
disappointment to-day,” she said, “though indeed I ought to have sent
you word had I not been so busy. You must have seen that Rose was not
herself yesterday. She has her father’s fine organization, poor child,
and all our troubles have told upon her. I have sent her to her old
school, to Miss Margetts, whose care I can rely upon, for a little
change. It will be handy in many ways, for I must go to town for
shopping, and it will be less fatiguing to Rose to meet me there than to
go up and down on the same day.”
“Then she was not well yesterday?” said Mr. Incledon, over whose face
various changes had passed of disappointment, annoyance, and relief.
“Could you not see that?” said the mother, smiling with gentle reproof.
“When did Rose show temper before? She has her faults, but that is not
one of them; but she has her father’s fine organization. I don’t
hesitate to say now, when it is all over, that poverty brought us many
annoyances and some privations, as it does to everybody, I suppose. Rose
has borne up bravely, but of course she felt them; and it is a specialty
with such highly-strung natures,” said this elaborate deceiver, “that
they never break down till the pressure is removed.”
“Ah! I ought to have known it,” said Mr. Incledon; “and, indeed,” he
added, after a pause, “what you say is a great relief, for I had begun
to fear that so young a creature might have found out that she had been
too hasty--that she did not know her own mind.”
“It is not her mind, but her nerves and temperament,” said the mother.
“I shall leave her quite quiet for a few days.”
“And must I leave her quiet too?”
“I think so, if you don’t mind. I could not tell you at the time,” said
Mrs. Damerel, with absolute truth and candor such as gave the best
possible effect when used as accompaniments to the pious fib, “for I
knew you would have wished to help us, and I could not have allowed it;
but there have been a great many things to put up with. You don’t know
what it is to be left to the tender mercies of a maid-of-all-work, and
Rose has had to soil her poor little fingers, as I never thought to see
a child of mine do; it is no disgrace, especially when it is all over,”
she added, with a little laugh.
“Disgrace! it is nothing but honor,” said the lover, with some moisture
starting into his eyes. He would have liked to kiss the poor little
fingers of which her mother spoke with playful tenderness, and went away
comparatively happy, wondering whether there was not something more to
do than he had originally thought of by which he could show his pride
and delight and loving homage to his Rose.
Poor Mrs. Damerel! I am afraid it was very wicked of her, as a
clergywoman who ought to show a good example to the world in general;
and she could have whipped Rose all the same for thus leaving her in the
lurch; but still it was clever, and a gift which most women have to
exercise, more or less.
But oh! the terrors which overwhelmed her soul when, after having
dismissed Mr. Incledon, thus wrapped over again in a false security, she
bethought herself that Rose had travelled to town in company with young
Wodehouse; that they had been shut up for more than an hour together;
that he had told his love-tale, and she had confided enough to him to
leave him not hopeless, at least. Other things might be made to arrange
themselves; but what was to be done with the always rebellious girl when
the man she preferred--a young lover, impassioned and urgent--had come
into the field?